OLDMEADOW, Kenneth Harry Touchstones Of The Spirit

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World Wisdom
The Library of Perennial Philosophy
      The Library of Perennial Philosophy is dedicated to the exposition of 
the timeless Truth underlying the diverse religions. This Truth, often re-
ferred to as the Sophia Perennis—or Perennial Wisdom—finds its expres-
sion in the revealed Scriptures as well as the writings of the great sages and 
the artistic creations of the traditional worlds.
 Touchstones of the Spirit appears as one of our selections in the Peren-
nial Philosophy series.
MKYkm 
The Perennial Philosophy Series
      In the beginning of the twentieth century, a school of thought arose 
which has focused on the enunciation and explanation of the Perennial 
Philosophy. Deeply rooted in the sense of the sacred, the writings of its 
leading exponents establish an indispensable foundation for understand-
ing the timeless Truth and spiritual practices which live in the heart of all 
religions. Some of these titles are companion volumes to the Treasures of 
the World’s Religions series, which allows a comparison of the writings of 
the great sages of the past with the perennialist authors of our time.
Other Books by the Same Author 
Traditionalism: Religion in the Light of the Perennial Philosophy (2000)
Journeys East: Twentieth Century Western Encounters with Eastern 
Religious Traditions (2004)
A Christian Pilgrim in India: The Spiritual Journey of Swami Abhishikt- 
ananda (Henri Le Saux) (2008)
Mediations: Essays on Religious Pluralism and the Perennial Philosophy 
(2008)
Frithjof Schuon and the Perennial Philosophy (2010)
Books Edited
The Betrayal of Tradition: Essays on the Spiritual Crisis of Modernity 
(2005)
Light from the East: Eastern Wisdom for the Modern West (2007)
Crossing Religious Frontiers: Studies in Comparative Religion (2010)
Touchstones 
of the Spirit
Essays on Religion, 
Tradition & Modernity
Harry Oldmeadow
Touchstones of the Spirit: 
Essays on Religion, Tradition, and Modernity
© 2012 World Wisdom, Inc.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner without written permission,
except in critical articles and reviews.
Cover: 
Rain God Mesa, 
Monument Valley, Utah.
Photo by Harry Oldmeadow
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Oldmeadow, Harry, 1947-
 Touchstones of the spirit : essays on religion, tradition & modernity / 
Harry Oldmeadow.
 p. cm. -- (The library of perennial philosophy)
 Includes bibliographical references and index.
 ISBN 978-1-936597-03-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Religions. I. Title. 
 BL87.O43 2012
 200--dc23
 2012002609
Printed on acid-free paper in the United States of America.
For information address World Wisdom, Inc.
P.O. Box 2682, Bloomington, Indiana 47402-2682
www.worldwisdom.com
CONTENTS
 Preface vii
I. Echoes of Tradition
 1. “Melodies from the Beyond”: The Spiritual Heritage of the 
Australian Aborigines 3
 2. Metaphysics: East and West 23
 3. Shankara’s Doctrine of Maya 43
 4. “The Last Blade of Grass”: The Bodhisattva Ideal in 
Mahayana Buddhism 67
 5. “Grass Upon the Hills”: Traditional and Modern Attitudes 
to Biography 87
 6. Joseph Epes Brown’s The Spiritual Legacy of the American 
Indian 99
II. The Wastelands of Modernity
 7. The False Prophets of Modernity: Darwin, Marx, Freud, and 
Nietzsche 105
 8. Frankenstein’s Children: Science, Scientism, and Self- 
Destruction 129
 9. Computers: An Academic Cargo Cult? 135
10. Frithjof Schuon on Culturism 149
11. The Past Disowned: The Political and Postmodern Assault on 
the Humanities 157
12. Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now 183
III. East and West
13. Ananda Coomaraswamy and the East-West Encounter 191
14. Frithjof Schuon on Eastern Traditions 197 
15. Ex Oriente Lux: Eastern Religions, Western Writers 213
16. Huston Smith, Bridge-Builder Extraordinaire: A Tribute 239
17. Swami Abhishiktananda on Sannyasa and the Monk’s 
Vocation 247
18. Across the Great Divide: Some Christian Responses to 
Religious Pluralism 267
Sources 285
Acknowledgments 289
Biographical Note 291
Index 293
vii
PREFACE
This compilation of essays is structured around three themes: the time-
less messages of Tradition; the obscuration of this perennial wisdom in 
the modern world; and the spiritual intercourse between East and West 
which holds out some hope that we may yet recover something of what 
we have lost. These subjects have preoccupied me in the thirty-five years 
since I first discovered the great traditionalist writers—René Guénon, 
Ananda Coomaraswamy, Frithjof Schuon, and Titus Burckhardt, and 
those who came after. In other works I have dealt with both the peren-
nialist outlook and the spiritual encounter of East and West in more 
systematic and comprehensive fashion. The present, somewhat unruly 
collection brings together scattered writings from the last thirty years. 
Previously isolated fragments are here strung, so to speak, on a single 
cord. Despite the diversity of subjects, readers will discern a persistent 
set of underlying concerns, related to the themes already mentioned. 
Taken as a whole, these essays comprise so many attempts, no doubt 
with varying degrees of success, to consider a variety of phenomena in 
the light of the principles so magisterially affirmed by the traditional-
ists. I do not, of course, suggest that all of my findings would meet with 
their approval. 
Most of the pieces gathered here have been previously published, 
most often in scholarly journals. They remain substantially as they were 
on first appearance. In essays composed over so many years there will 
inevitably be some unevenness in tone and style, some inconsisten-
cies and incongruities. I have made no effort to harmonize either the 
content or style of these essays, preferring, for better or worse, to leave 
them more or less intact. However, I have removed a few anachronisms, 
rectified some of the more conspicuous stylistic inadvertencies, stand-
ardized some terminology and made some minor changes to the text, 
mainly to avoid undue repetition. In several cases footnotes have been 
severely culled; readers wanting fuller documentation are directed back 
to the originals which are listed in the Sources section at the end of this 
book. In some instances I have substituted more recent editions than 
those originally cited, particularly with respect to the writings of Frith-
jof Schuon, and here and there I have added a reference to a work which 
had not appeared at the time of first writing.
Harry Oldmeadow
I. Echoes of Tradition
The sense of the sacred is fundamental for every civili-
zation because fundamental for man; the sacred—that 
which is immutable, inviolable, and thus infinitely ma-
jestic—is in the very substance of our spirit and of our 
existence.
Frithjof Schuon
3
chapter 1
 
“Melodies from the Beyond”:
The Spiritual Heritage of the Australian Aborigines
In all epochs and in all countries there have been revelations, reli-
gions, wisdoms; tradition is a part of mankind just as man is a part 
of tradition.
Frithjof Schuon1
In The Reign of Quantity (1945) René Guénon observes that it is only 
in these latter days of the accelerating “solidification” of the world, that 
“Cain finally and really slays Abel”2—which is to say that the seden-
tary civilizations destroy the nomadic cultures. Moreover, Guénon re-
marks,
It could be said in a general way that the works of sedentary peoples 
are works of time: these people are fixed in space within a strictly 
limited domain, and develop their activities in a temporal continuity 
that appears to them to be indefinite. On the other hand, nomadic 
and pastoral peoples build nothing durable, and do not work for a 
future that escapes them; but they have space before them, not facing 
them with any limitation, but on the contrary always offering them 
new possibilities.3 
No doubt it was with such considerations in mind thatof the relationship of metaphysics and philosophy, 
highly pertinent to the subject at hand. 
“Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe 
upon instinct.”17 This Bradleian formulation, perhaps only half-serious, 
15 S.H. Nasr, “Conditions for a Meaningful Comparative Philosophy,” p. 59.
16 See Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy (first published 1944) (New York: Harper & 
Row, 1970).
17 From F.H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, quoted by S. Radhakrishnan, “Reply to 
touchstones of the spirit
30
signposts a modern conception of metaphysics shared by a good many 
people, philosophers and otherwise. There is, of course, no single mod-
ern philosophical posture on the nature and significance of metaphys-
ics. Some see it as a kind of residual blight on the tree of philosophy, a 
feeding-ground for obscurantists and lovers of mumbo-jumbo. Others 
grant it a more dignified status.18 It is one of those words, like “dogma” 
or “mystical,” which has been pejorated by careless and ignorant us-
age. The word is so fraught with hazards, so hedged about with philo-
sophical disputation, and so sullied by popular usage that we shall have 
to take some care if the proper sense in which the perennialists use the 
word is to become clear. Nasr: “Metaphysics, which in fact is one and 
should be named metaphysic . . . is the science of the Real, of the origin 
and end of things, of the Absolute and in its light, the relative.”19 Simi-
larly “metaphysical”: “concerned with universal realities considered 
objectively.”20 It will be readily apparent that we are here dealing with a 
conception of metaphysics which would not be shared by most mod-
ern Western philosophers.
As René Guénon observed more than once, metaphysics cannot 
properly and strictly be defined, for to define is to limit, while the 
domain of metaphysics is the Real and thus limitless. Consequently, 
metaphysics “is truly and absolutely unlimited and cannot be confined 
to any formula or any system.”21 Its subject, in the words of Johannes 
Tauler, is “that pure knowledge that knows no form or creaturely 
way.”22 As Nasr observes elsewhere,
This supreme science of the Real . . . is the only science that can dis-
My Critics” in The Philosophy of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, ed. P.A. Schilpp (New York: 
Tudor, 1952), p. 791.
18 For some discussion of this term by a modern philosopher see J. Hospers, An In-
troduction to Philosophical Analysis (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956), pp. 211ff.
19 S.H. Nasr, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man (London: Allen & 
Unwin, 1976), p. 81.
20 F. Schuon, Logic and Transcendence: A New Translation with Selected Letters 
(Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2009), p. 176n.
21 R. Guénon, “Oriental Metaphysics” in The Sword of Gnosis, ed. J. Needleman (Bal-
timore: Penguin, 1974), pp. 43-44.
22 Tauler quoted in C.F. Kelley, Meister Eckhart on Divine Knowledge (New Haven: 
Yale University Press, 1977), p. 4.
metaphysics: east and west
31
tinguish between the Absolute and the relative, appearance and real-
ity. . . . Moreover, this science exists, as the esoteric dimension within 
every orthodox and integral tradition and is united with a spiritual 
method derived totally from the tradition in question.23
The ultimate reality of metaphysics is the Supreme Identity in 
which all oppositions and dualities are resolved, those of subject and 
object, knower and known, being and non-being; thus a Scriptural for-
mulation such as “The things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit 
of God.”24 As Ananda Coomaraswamy remarks, in traditional civiliza-
tions such as that of India, metaphysics provided the vision (or theoria) 
and religion the way to its effective verification and actualization in di-
rect experience.25 The early estrangement of metaphysics, philosophy, 
and religion in the West is a peculiar phenomenon. 
Because the metaphysical realm lies “beyond” the phenomenal 
plane the validity of a metaphysical principle can be neither proved 
nor disproved by any kind of empirical demonstration, by reference 
to material realities.26 The aim of metaphysics is not to prove anything 
whatsoever but to make doctrines intelligible and to demonstrate their 
consistency. Metaphysics is concerned with a direct apprehension of 
reality or, to put it differently, with a recognition of the Absolute and 
our relationship to it. It thus takes on an imperative character for those 
capable of metaphysical discernment.
The requirement for us to recognize the Absolute is itself an absolute 
one; it concerns man as such and not man under such and such con-
23 S.H. Nasr, Man and Nature, pp. 81-82. See also Coomaraswamy’s undated letter to 
“M” in Selected Letters of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, ed. R.P. Coomaraswamy & A. 
Moore Jr. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 10: “traditional Metaphysics 
is as much a single and invariable science as mathematics.”
24 1 Corinthians 2:11. The Absolute may be called God, the Godhead, nirguna-Brah-
man, the Tao, and so on, according to the vocabulary at hand. See F. Schuon, Light on 
the Ancient Worlds: A New Translation with Selected Letters (Bloomington, IN: World 
Wisdom, 2006), p. 75n. 
25 A.K. Coomaraswamy, “A Lecture on Comparative Religion,” quoted in R. Lipsey, 
Coomaraswamy, Vol. 3: His Life and Work (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 
1977), p. 275. Also see A.K. Coomaraswamy, “The Vedanta and Western Tradition” in 
Coomaraswamy, Vol. 2: Selected Papers, Metaphysics, ed. R. Lipsey (Princeton: Princ-
eton University Press, 1977), p. 6. 
26 See R. Guénon, “Oriental Metaphysics,” p. 53. 
touchstones of the spirit
32
ditions. It is a fundamental aspect of human dignity, and especially 
of that intelligence which denoted “the state of man hard to obtain,” 
that we accept Truth because it is true and for no other reason.27
Metaphysics assumes man’s capacity for absolute and certain 
knowledge:
This capacity for objectivity and for absoluteness amounts to an 
existential—and “preventive”—refutation of all the ideologies of 
doubt: if man is able to doubt, it is because there is certainty; likewise 
the very notion of illusion proves that man has access to reality. . . . If 
doubt conformed to the real, human intelligence would be deprived 
of its sufficient reason, and man would be less than an animal, for 
the intelligence of animals does not doubt the reality to which it is 
proportioned.28 
Metaphysics, therefore, is immutable and inexorable, and the “infal-
lible standard by which not only religions, but still more ‘philosophies’ 
and ‘sciences’ must be ‘corrected’ . . . and interpreted.”29 Metaphysics 
can be ignored or forgotten but not refuted “precisely because it is im-
mutable and not related to change qua change.”30 Metaphysical prin-
ciples are true and valid once and for all and not for this particular 
age or mentality, and could not, in any sense, “evolve.” They can be 
validated directly in the plenary and unitive experience of the mystic. 
Thus Martin Lings can write of Sufism—and one could say the same of 
any intrinsically orthodox esotericism—that it
has the right to be inexorable because it is based on certainties and 
not on opinions. It has the obligation to be inexorable because mysti-
cism is the sole repository of Truth, in the fullest sense, being above 
all concerned with the Absolute, the Infinite, and the Eternal; and 
“If the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted?” Without 
mysticism, Reality would have no voice in the world. There would be 
27 F. Schuon, In the Tracks of Buddhism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1968), p. 33. 
28 F. Schuon, Logic and Transcendence, p. 11. See also F. Schuon, Esoterism as Principle 
and as Way (London: Perennial Books, 1981), pp. 15ff. 
29 Letter to J.H. Muirhead, August 1935, in A.K. Coomaraswamy, Selected Letters, p. 37.
30 S.H. Nasr, Sufi Essays (London: Allen & Unwin, 1972), p. 86. See also F. Schuon, 
Stations of Wisdom (London: John Murray, 1961),p. 42.
metaphysics: east and west
33
no record of the true hierarchy, and no witness that it is continually 
being violated.31
One might easily substitute the word “metaphysics” for “mysti-
cism” in this passage, the former being the formal and objective aspect 
of the “subjective” experience. However, this is not to lose sight of the 
fact that any and every metaphysical doctrine will take it as axiomatic 
that every formulation is, in the face of the Divine Reality itself, “a pro-
visional, indispensable, salutary ‘error,’ containing and communicating 
the virtuality of Truth.”32 
Modern European philosophy is dialectical, which is to say ana-
lytical and rational in its modes. From a traditionalist point of view 
it might be said that modern philosophy is anchored in a misunder-
standing of the nature and role of reason; indeed, the idolatry of rea-
son could otherwise hardly have arisen. Schuon spotlights some of the 
strengths and deficiencies of the rational mode in these terms:
Reason is formal by its nature and formalistic in its operations; it 
proceeds by “coagulations,” by alternatives and by exclusions—or, it 
can be said, by partial truths. It is not, like pure intellect, formless 
and “fluid” “light”; true, it derives its implacability, or its validity in 
general, from the intellect, but it touches on essences only through 
drawing conclusions, not by direct vision; it is indispensable for ver-
bal formulations but it does not involve immediate knowledge.33
Titus Burckhardt likens reason to “a convex lens which steers the 
intelligence in a particular direction and onto a limited field.”34 Like 
any other instrument it can be abused. Much European philosophy, 
adrift from its religious moorings, has surrendered to a totalitarian ra-
tionalism and in so doing has violated a principle which was respected 
31 M. Lings, What is Sufism? (London: Allen & Unwin, 1975), p. 93. 
32 F. Schuon, Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts: A New Translation with Select-
ed Letters (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2007), p173. Cf. A.K. Coomaraswamy: 
“every belief is a heresy if it be regarded as the truth, and not simply as a signpost of the 
truth” (“Sri Ramakrishna and Religious Tolerance” in Selected Papers 2, p. 38). 
33 F. Schuon, Understanding Islam (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom Books, 1998), p. 
15. See also F. Schuon, Stations of Wisdom, pp. 18ff.
34 T. Burckhardt, Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul (Baltimore: Pen-
guin, 1972), p. 36 n1.
touchstones of the spirit
34
wherever a metaphysical tradition and a religious framework for the 
pursuit of wisdom remained intact—the principle of adequation, ar-
ticulated thus by Aquinas: “It is a sin against intelligence to want to 
proceed in an identical manner in typically different domains—physi-
cal, mathematical, metaphysical—of speculative knowledge.”35 This, it 
would seem, is precisely what modern philosophers are bent on. No 
less apposite in this context is Plotinus’ well-known maxim “knowing 
demands the organ fitted to the object.”36 The grotesqueries of mod-
ern philosophy spring, in large measure, from an indifference to this 
principle. The situation is exacerbated further by the fact that many 
philosophers have been duped by the claims of a gross scientism and 
thus suffer from a drastically impoverished view of reality and of the 
avenues by which it might be apprehended. 
The place of reason, of logic and dialectic, in metaphysics is al-
together more subordinate as the following sample of quotes make 
clear. It is worth mobilizing several quotations as this issue is so often 
misunderstood, with bizarre results. From Schuon:
In the intellectual order logical proof is no more than a thoroughly 
provisional crystallization of intuition, the modes of which are incal-
culable because of the complexity of the real.37
Or again: 
Metaphysics is not held to be true—by those who understand it—
because it is expressed in a logical manner, but it can be expressed 
in a logical manner because it is true, without—obviously—its truth 
ever being compromised by the possible shortcomings of human 
reason.38 
Similarly Guénon: 
[F]or metaphysics, the use of rational argument never represents 
more than a mode of external expression (necessarily imperfect and 
35 Quoted in S.H. Nasr, Man and Nature, p. 35.
36 Quoted in E.F. Schumacher, A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Jonathan Cape, 
1977), p. 49.
37 F. Schuon, Spiritual Perspectives, p. 3.
38 F. Schuon, Esoterism as Principle and as Way, p. 28. 
metaphysics: east and west
35
inadequate as such) and in no way affects metaphysical knowledge 
itself, for the latter must always be kept essentially distinct from its 
formulation. . . .39
 
Metaphysical discernment proceeds more through contemplative 
intelligence than through ratiocination. Metaphysical formulations de-
pend more on symbol and on analogy than on logical demonstration, 
though it is a grave error to suppose that metaphysics has any right to 
irrationality.40 What many modern philosophers apparently fail to un-
derstand is that thought can become increasingly subtle and complex 
without approaching any nearer to the truth. An idea can be subdi-
vided into a thousand ramifications, fenced about with every conceiv-
able qualification and supported with the most intricate and rigorous 
logic but, for all that, remain purely external and quantitative for “no 
virtuosity of the potter will transform clay into gold.”41 Furthermore,
it apparently never crosses the minds of pure logicians that a line of 
reasoning might simply be the logical and provisional description of 
something that is intellectually self-evident and that the function of 
this reasoning might be the actualization of a self-evidence in itself 
supralogical.42 
Analytical rationality, no matter how useful a tool, will never, in 
itself, generate metaphysical understanding. Metaphysicians of all ages 
have said nothing other. Shankara, for instance: “[T]he pure truth of 
Atman . . . can be reached by meditation, contemplation and other 
spiritual disciplines such as a knower of Brahman may prescribe—but 
never by subtle argument.”43 The Promethean arrogance of much mod-
ernist thought, often bred by scientistic ideologies, is revealed in the 
refusal to acknowledge the boundaries beyond which reason has no 
competence or utility. This has, of course, prompted some quite ludi-
crous claims about religion. As Schuon remarks,
39 R. Guénon quoted in F. Schuon, Stations of Wisdom, p. 29n. 
40 See F. Schuon, Esoterism as Principle and as Way, p. 28. 
41 F. Schuon, Understanding Islam, p. 181. 
42 F. Schuon, Logic and Transcendence, pp. 31-32. 
43 Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination, ed. Swami Prabhananda & C. Isherwood 
(New York: Mentor, 1970), p. 73. 
touchstones of the spirit
36
The equating of the supernatural with the irrational . . . amounts to 
claiming that the unknown or the incomprehensible is the same as 
the absurd. The rationalism of a frog living at the bottom of a well is 
to deny the existence of mountains: this is logic of a kind but it has 
nothing to do with reality.44 
 
The intelligibility of a metaphysical doctrine may depend upon a 
measure of faith in the traditional Christian sense of “assent to a cred-
ible proposition.” As Coomaraswamy observes, 
One must believe in order to understand and understand in order to 
believe. These are not successive, however, but simultaneous acts of 
the mind. In other words, there can be no knowledge of anything to 
which the will refuses its consent. . . . 45
This mode of apprehension is something quite other than the philo-
sophical thought that 
believes it can attain to an absolute contact with Reality by means 
of analyses, syntheses, arrangements, filtrations, and polishings—
thought that is mundane because of this very ignorance and because 
it is a “vicious circle,” which not only provides no escape from illu-
sion, but even reinforcesit through the lure of a progressive knowl-
edge that is in fact nonexistent.46
It is in this context that we can speak of modern philosophy as 
“the codification of an acquired infirmity.”47 Unlike modern philoso-
phy, metaphysics has nothing to do with personal opinion, originality, 
or creativity—quite the contrary. It is directed towards those realities 
which lie outside mental perimeters and which are unchanging. The 
most a metaphysician will ever want to do is to reformulate some 
timeless truth so that it becomes more intelligible in the prevailing cli-
44 F. Schuon, Logic and Transcendence, p. 37. 
45 A.K. Coomaraswamy, “Vedanta and Western Tradition,” p. 8. See also S.H. Nasr, 
Knowledge and the Sacred, p. 6. 
46 F. Schuon, Logic and Transcendence, p. 174.
47 F. Schuon, The Transfiguration of Man (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom Books, 
1995), p. 4. 
metaphysics: east and west
37
mate.48 A profane system of thought, on the other hand, is never more 
than a portrait of the person who creates it, an “involuntary memoir,” 
as Nietzsche put it.49 
The metaphysician does not seek to invent or discover or prove a 
new system of thought but rather to crystallize direct apprehensions 
of Reality insofar as this is possible within the limited resources of hu-
man language, making use not only of logic but of symbol and anal-
ogy. Furthermore, the science of metaphysics must always proceed in 
the context of a revealed religion, protected by the tradition in ques-
tion which also supplies the necessary supports for the full realization 
or actualization of metaphysical doctrines.  The metaphysician seeks 
not only to formulate immutable principles and doctrines but to live by 
them, to conform his or her being to the truths they convey. In other 
words, there is nothing of the “art for art’s sake” type of thinking about 
the pursuit of metaphysics: it engages the whole person or it is as noth-
ing.50 As Schuon states,
The moral requirement of metaphysical discernment means that vir-
tue is part of wisdom; a wisdom without virtue is in fact imposture 
and hypocrisy. . . . [P]lenary knowledge of Divine Reality presuppos-
es or demands moral conformity to this Reality, as the eye necessar-
ily conforms to light; since the object to be known is the Sovereign 
Good, the knowing subject must correspond to it analogically.51
 
A point often overlooked: metaphysics does not of necessity find 
its expression only in verbal forms. Metaphysics can be expressed visu-
ally and ritually as well as verbally. The Chinese and Red Indian tradi-
tions furnish pre-eminent examples of these possibilities. 
Metaphysics and Theology
The relationship between metaphysics and theology, and theology and 
philosophy, invites a similar exposition. However, given that we are 
48 Here we are at the opposite end of the spectrum not only from the philosophical 
relativists but from those who hold a “personalist” or “existentialist” view of truth.
49 F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1886), taken from Extract 13 in A Nietzsche 
Reader, ed. R.J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), p. 39. 
50 See A.K. Coomaraswamy, “Vedanta and Western Tradition,” p. 9.
51 F. Schuon, Roots of the Human Condition (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom Books, 
1991), p. 86. 
touchstones of the spirit
38
here primarily concerned with the practice of comparative philosophy 
we shall restrict ourselves to two passages from Schuon which go to the 
heart of the matter. From Schuon’s The Transcendent Unity of Religions 
(1953): 
[I]ntellectual knowledge also transcends the specifically theological 
point of view, which is itself incomparably superior to the philosoph-
ical point of view, since, like metaphysical knowledge, it emanates 
from God and not from man; but whereas metaphysics proceeds 
wholly from intellectual intuition, religion proceeds from Revela-
tion. . . . [I]n the case of intellectual intuition, knowledge is not pos-
sessed by the individual insofar as he is an individual, but insofar as 
in his innermost essence he is not distinct from the Divine Principle. 
. . . [T]he theological point of view, because it is based in the minds 
of believers on a Revelation and not on a knowledge that is acces-
sible to each one of them . . . will of necessity confuse the symbol 
or form with the naked and supraformal Truth, while metaphysics 
. . . will be able to make use of the same symbol or form as a means 
of expression while at the same time being aware of its relativity. . . . 
[R]eligion translates metaphysical or universal truths into dogmatic 
language. . . . What essentially distinguishes the metaphysical from 
the philosophical proposition is that the former is symbolical and 
descriptive . . . whereas philosophy . . . is never anything more than 
what it expresses. When philosophy uses reason to resolve a doubt, 
this proves precisely that its starting point is a doubt it is striving to 
overcome, whereas . . . the starting point of a metaphysical formula-
tion is always essentially something intellectually evident or certain, 
which is communicated, to those able to receive it, by symbolical or 
dialectical means designed to awaken in them the latent knowledge 
which they bear unconsciously, and it may even be said, eternally 
within them.52 
In this context it is worth recalling Bertrand Russell’s assessment 
of St. Thomas Aquinas in A History of Western Philosophy (1946):
There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. . . . The find-
ing of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy 
but special pleading. I cannot, therefore, feel that he deserves to be 
52 F. Schuon, The Transcendent Unity of Religions (Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 1993), 
pp. xxx-xxxii.
metaphysics: east and west
39
put on a level with the best philosophers either of Greece or of mod-
ern times.53 
How right George Steiner was to refer to Russell’s history as “a vulgar 
but representative book”!54 
The distinctions elaborated above by Schuon should be qualified 
by an observation he made in a later work: 
In our first book, The Transcendent Unity of Religions, we adopted 
the point of view of Ghazzali regarding “philosophy”: that is, bearing 
in mind the great impoverishment of modern philosophies, we sim-
plified the problem as others have done before us by making “phi-
losophy” synonymous with “rationalism.”55 
We have followed more or less the same procedure here and will 
only modify it with two brief points. Firstly, the term “philosophy” in 
itself “has nothing restrictive about it”; the restrictions which we have 
imposed on it in this discussion have been expedient rather than es-
sential. Schuon has exposed some of the issues raised by both the an-
cient and modern use of the term in an essay entitled “Tracing the 
Notion of Philosophy.”56 Secondly, it must also be admitted that our 
discussion of the relationships of philosophy, theology, and metaphys-
ics has been governed by some necessary simplifications. From certain 
points of view the distinctions are not as clear-cut nor as rigid as our 
discussion has suggested. As Schuon himself writes,
In a certain respect the difference between philosophy, theology, and 
gnosis is total; in another respect it is relative.  It is total when one 
understands by “philosophy” only rationalism, by “theology” only 
the explanation of religious teachings, and by gnosis only intuitive 
and intellective, thus supra-rational, knowledge; but the difference 
is only relative when one understands by “philosophy” the fact of 
53 B. Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (first published 1949) (London: Allen & 
Unwin, 1989), pp. 453-54.
54 G. Steiner, Heidegger (Glasgow: Collins, 1978), p. 11.
55 F. Schuon, Sufism: Veil and Quintessence, A New Translation with Selected Letters 
(Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2006), pp. 95-96n. 
56 F. Schuon, Sufism: Veil and Quintessence, pp. 89-100. See also F. Schuon, Transfigu-
ration of Man, p. 3. 
touchstonesof the spirit
40
thinking, by “theology” the fact of speaking dogmatically of God and 
religious things, and by gnosis the fact of presenting pure metaphys-
ics, for then the categories interpenetrate.57
It is only in the context of the considerations elaborated above, 
admittedly at some length, that we can return to the question of East-
West comparative philosophy. 
Perennialism and Comparative Metaphysics
In the light of the preceding discussion it will come as no surprise that 
the scholars and thinkers whose comparative studies have produced 
the most impressive results are precisely those who have a firm pur-
chase on traditional principles. Of the traditionalists themselves one 
must particularly mention the works of Ananda Coomaraswamy and 
Frithjof Schuon. This is not to ignore the pioneering role of René Gué-
non in explicating the metaphysical doctrines of the East in such works 
as Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta (1925). In the pres-
ent context, however, he recedes somewhat into the background for 
several reasons. Guénon proceeded on the basis of first principles with 
comparatively little concern for their historical manifestations and 
applications. His scholarship was sometimes precarious and he was 
entirely disdainful of modern thought in all its guises. To undertake 
comparative philosophy of the kind with which are here concerned 
requires some sensitivity to the historical milieux in which traditional 
doctrines were given expression. Schuon and Coomaraswamy were 
much better equipped to undertake this kind of task. Nasr himself has 
produced some of the most authoritative works in the field of com-
parative philosophy but these have been concerned primarily with the 
Islamic and Christian worlds. 
Ananda Coomaraswamy was one of the few scholars of the cen-
tury who was equally at home in the worlds of Eastern and Western 
philosophy. Recall his observation that “my indoctrination with the 
Philosophia Perennis is primarily Oriental, secondarily Mediaeval, 
and thirdly classic.”58 His later work is saturated with references to 
Plato and Plotinus, Augustine and Aquinas, Eckhart and the Rhenish 
57 F. Schuon, Sufism: Veil and Quintessence, p. 97.
58 Letter to Artemus Packard, May 1941, in A.K. Coomaraswamy, Selected Letters, p. 
299.
metaphysics: east and west
41
mystics, to Shankara and Lao-tse and Nagarjuna. Amongst his most 
profound studies in the field of comparative philosophy we find “The 
Vedanta and Western Tradition” (1939), “Recollection, Indian and Pla-
tonic” (1944), “Akimcanna: Self-Naughting” (1940), and “Atmayajna: 
Self-Sacrifice” (1942)—but one can turn to almost any of his later writ-
ings to find profound comparative exegeses. He was, of course, keenly 
interested in the philosophical underpinnings of traditional art, and 
produced two dazzling comparative works in The Transformation of 
Nature in Art (1934) and The Christian and Oriental, or True, Philoso-
phy of Art (1939). Readers familiar with these works will not quarrel 
with the claim that they offer us a comparative philosophy of the most 
fruitful kind.
Much of Schuon’s vast corpus focuses primarily on the Sufi tra-
dition and on classical and Christian thinkers. Nonetheless, one is 
likely, at any turn, to come across illuminating references to Eastern 
metaphysicians and theologians, Shankara and Ramanuja being two 
to whom Schuon often refers. However, four of his works entail more 
detailed comparisons of Eastern and Western doctrines: The Transcen-
dent Unity of Religions (1954), Language of the Self (1959), In the Tracks 
of Buddhism (1967), and Logic and Transcendence (1975). The last-men-
tioned work is also where Schuon confronts the profane philosophies 
of the modern period most directly. 
Many perennialist works also fall under the umbrella of compara-
tive mysticism, the distinction between “philosophy” and “mysticism” 
being somewhat fluid in the traditional worlds of the Orient. In the 
academic domain we might say that comparative mysticism oscil-
lates between philosophy and comparative religion. Impressive work 
has been done in this arena by several scholars and thinkers. Rudolf 
Otto’s Mysticism East and West (1926), D.T. Suzuki’s Mysticism Chris-
tian and Buddhist (1957), Toshihiko Izutsu’s A Comparative Study of the 
Key Philosophical Concepts in Sufism and Taoism (1967), and Thomas 
Merton’s Zen and the Birds of Appetite (1968) are amongst the more 
commanding works. 
43
chapter 3
Shankara’s Doctrine of Maya
Maya is most strange. Her nature is inexplicable.
 Shankara1
Brahman is real; the world is an illusory appearance; the so-called 
soul is Brahman itself, and no other.
 Shankara2
The doctrine of maya occupies a pivotal position in Shankara’s meta-
physics. Before focusing on this doctrine it will perhaps be helpful to 
make clear Shankara’s purposes in elaborating the Advaita Vedanta. 
Some of the misconceptions which have afflicted English commen-
taries on Shankara will thus be banished before they can cause any 
further mischief. Firstly, Shankara should not be understood as a “phi-
losopher” in the modern Western sense. Ananda Coomaraswamy has 
rightly insisted that,
The Vedanta is not a philosophy in the current sense of the word, 
but only as it is used in the phrase Philosophia Perennis. . . . Modern 
philosophies are closed systems, employing the method of dialec-
tics, and taking for granted that opposites are mutually exclusive. 
In modern philosophy things are either so or not so; in eternal phi-
losophy this depends upon our point of view. Metaphysics is not a 
system but a consistent doctrine; it is not merely concerned with 
conditioned and quantitative experience but with universal possibil-
ity. It therefore considers possibilities that may be neither possibili-
ties of manifestation nor in any sense formal, as well as ensembles of 
possibilities that can be realized in a given world.3 
1 Shankara, The Crest-Jewel of Discrimination, trans. Swami Prabhavananda & C. Ish-
erwood (New York: New American Library, 1970), p. 49. (The transliteration and itali-
cizing of Sanskrit terms has been standardized throughout.)
2 Shankara quoted in T.M.P. Mahadevan, Ramana Maharshi: The Sage of Arunacala 
(London: Unwin & Allen, 1978), p. 120.
3 A.K. Coomaraswamy, “The Vedanta and Western Tradition” in Coomaraswamy, Vol. 
touchstones of the spirit
44
This alerts us to the kind of confusion which bedevils any attempt 
to accommodate Advaita Vedanta within the assumptions and the vo-
cabulary of a purely rational and dialectical philosophic outlook; this 
remains true whether one is engaged in exposition or apparent “refuta-
tion.” The same misconceptions will ambush any study resting on the 
assumption that metaphysics is but a branch of philosophy.
[W]hat essentially distinguishes the metaphysical from the philo-
sophical proposition is that the former is symbolical and descriptive, 
in the sense that it makes use of rational modes as symbols to de-
scribe or translate knowledge possessing a greater degree of certain-
ty than any knowledge of a sensible order, whereas philosophy . . . is 
never anything more than what it expresses. When philosophy uses 
reason to resolve a doubt, this proves precisely that its starting point 
is a doubt that it is striving to overcome, whereas . . . the starting 
point of a metaphysical formulation is always essentially something 
intellectually evident or certain, which is to be communicated, to 
those able to receive it, by symbolical or dialectical means designed 
to awaken in them the latent knowledge that they bear unconscious-
ly and, it may even be said, eternally within them.4 
Metaphysics, then, both grows out of and points to the plenary and 
unitive experience of Reality. It attempts to fashion out of the ambigui-
ties and limitations of language, and with the aid of symbolism, dia-
lectics, analogy, and whatever lies at hand, principles and propositions 
which testifyto that Reality. Metaphysics is, in brief, “the doctrine of 
the uncreated.”5 
Shankara was not the “author” of a new “philosophy” but a meta-
physician and spiritual teacher. His purpose was to demonstrate the 
unity and consistency of the Upanishadic teachings on Brahman, and 
to explain certain apparent contradictions “by a correlation of different 
formulations with the point of view implied in them.”6 Like his gu-
rus Gaudapada and Govinda, Shankara was engaged in an explication 
2: Selected Papers, Metaphysics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 6.
4 F. Schuon, The Transcendent Unity of Religions (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), pp. 
xxix-xxx.
5 T. Burckhardt, Alchemy: Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul (Harmondsworth: 
Penguin, 1971), p. 36.
6 A.K. Coomaraswamy, “Vedanta and Western Tradition,” p. 4. See also p. 22.
shankara’s doctrine of maya
45
of Vedanta and the development of a framework, both doctrinal and 
practical, for the quest of liberation. 
However, Shankara’s teachings should in no sense be considered 
irrational or anti-rational; he was, indeed, a masterful logician and 
a most formidable opponent in debate. The point is simply that his 
metaphysic, while it mobilizes reason where appropriate, cannot be 
strait-jacketed in any purely rationalistic framework. Reason was not 
the idol it has become for some but rather a tool, an instrument, not 
the ultimate avenue to, or test of, Reality. Shankara himself warned 
that:
the pure truth of Atman, which is buried under maya, can be reached 
by meditation, contemplation, and other spiritual disciplines such as 
a knower of Brahman may prescribe—but never by subtle argument.7
 
Mircea Eliade has suggested that: 
Four basic and interdependent concepts, four ‘kinetic ideas’ bring 
us directly to the core of Indian spirituality. They are karma, maya, 
nirvana, and yoga. A coherent history of Indian thought could be 
written starting from any one of these basic concepts; the other three 
would inevitably have to be discussed.8
This claim not only emphasizes the cardinal importance of the doc-
trine of maya but also forewarns us of the hazards of considering it in 
isolation. 
T.R.V. Murti has remarked that any absolutism, be it that of Mad-
hyamika Buddhism, Vedanta or Bradleian philosophy, must posit a 
distinction between the ultimately Real and the empirically or relative-
ly real. It thus establishes a doctrine of two truths and, consequently, a 
theory of illusion to explain the relationship.9 Mahadevan has clearly 
7 Shankara, Crest-Jewel of Discrimination, p. 43.
8 M. Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 
1969), p. 3. It should perhaps be noted that by nirvana Eliade is here signaling whatever 
bears on the Absolute, be it called nirvana, Brahman, or whatever. Similarly, the term 
yoga is to be understood in its full amplitude both as “spiritual means” and “union,” 
rather than as referring only to a particular darshana.
9 T.R.V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1974), p. 
104 and pp. 320ff. See also R. Brooks, “Some Uses and Implications of Advaita Vedan-
touchstones of the spirit
46
articulated the problem which Advaita Vedanta had to resolve: 
Truth, knowledge, infinitude is Brahman. Mutable, non-intelligent, 
finite, and perishing is the world. Brahman is pure, attributeless, im-
partite, and immutable. The world is a manifold of changing phe-
nomena, fleeting events, and finite things. . . . The problem for the 
Advaitin is to solve how from the pure Brahman the impure world 
of men and things came into existence. It is on this rock that most of 
the monistic systems break.10 
Shankara’s resolution of this problem hinges on the doctrine of maya. 
The Samkhya-Yoga darshana had postulated the existence of two 
distinct and ultimate entities, purusha (loosely, “spirit”) and prakriti 
(loosely, “nature” or “matter,” not excluding subtle matter). The nature 
of reality had been explained in terms of a cooperative relationship 
between these two entities, prakriti being for man “a veritable fairy 
godmother.”11 For Shankara and the Advaitins this formulation was 
untenable: no such relationship could exist between two entities so 
disparate. Not only did they believe that the Samkhya view could not 
be supported logically but it also compromised the sole reality of Brah-
man which Shankara identified as the central teaching of the Upani-
shads. The alternatives to the Samkhya view were either a full-blown 
materialism which could immediately be thrown out of court under 
the auspices of Upanishadic shruti, or the belief that material existents 
are in some sense less than real—illusions utterly dependent on the 
reality of Brahman for their existence but their apparent independence 
and multiple existences grounded in some pervasive error. Such was 
the Advaitin view and it was along these lines that the puzzling rela-
tionship of the phenomenal world to Brahman was to be explained, the 
doctrine of maya being the key to the whole argument. 
Let us consider the suggestive etymology of the term maya which 
has been translated, or at least signaled, by a kaleidoscopic array of 
terms. These can be sampled in two clusters: (a) “illusion,” “conceal-
ta’s Doctrine of Maya” in The Problem of Two Truths in Buddhism and Vedanta, ed. M. 
Sprung (Dodrecht: D. Reidel, 1973), p. 98.
10 T.M.P. Mahadevan, The Philosophy of Advaita (Madras: Ganesh & Co, 1957), p. 227.
11 For a discussion of the Samkhya position see M. Hiriyana, The Essentials of Indian 
Philosophy (London: Unwin, 1978), pp. 107-120.
shankara’s doctrine of maya
47
ment,” “the web of seeming,” “appearance,” “glamour,” “relativity,” 
“classification,” “contingency,” “objectivization,” “distinctivization,” 
“exteriorization”; (b) “cosmic power,” “divine art,” “universal unfold-
ing,” “cosmic magic,” “the power of Ishvara,” and “the principle of self-
expression.” Clearly, behind these terms there is a principle of consid-
erable subtlety. However, in these translations, we can see two strands 
of meaning—more or less negative in the first group, positive in the 
latter. The Sanskrit terms avarana (“concealment”) and vikshepa (“pro-
jection”) are closely associated with the notion of maya and designate 
two aspects, or guises, of it. These twin faces of maya are reflected in 
Hindu temple iconography and are woven through the etymology of 
the word. 
The word maya is linked to the root “matr”: “to measure, form, 
build, or plan.” Several Greco-Latin words are also connected with this 
root: meter, matrix, matter, and material.12 On a more immediate, liter-
al level the word refers simply to “that which” (ya) “is not” (ma).13 In its 
more positive meanings we find maya is related to the Assyrian maya 
(magic) and to Maya-Devi (mother of Shakyamuni Buddha), Maia 
(mother of Hermes) and Maria (mother of Jesus).14 Here we can detect 
the obvious association with the feminine and Shaktic pole of manifes-
tation. These etymological considerations provide clues to the various 
meanings which will emerge more clearly in subsequent discussion. 
As Mahadevan has said, following Shankara, “To logic maya is a 
puzzle. Wonder is its garment; inscrutable is its nature.”15 This does not 
mean that nothing whatsoever can be said about maya in logical terms 
but rather that the ratiocinative process must necessarily arrive, sooner 
or later, at certain impasses which cannot, by their nature, be overcome 
logically. Shankara did elaborate a detailed and acute dialectical ex-
amination of maya; in itself this could not unlock the nature of maya, 
but through it the mind could be cleared of certain misconceptions. 
The condensed exposition following attempts to rehearse Shankara’s 
argument in outline and in its most salient points. 
Maya is a power or potency of Brahman, coeval with Brahman, 
12 A. Watts, The Way of Zen (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), p. 59.
13 T.M.P.Mahadevan, Outlines of Hinduism (Bombay: Chetana, 1956), p. 149.
14 W. Perry (ed.), A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom (London: Allen & Unwin, 1971), 
p. 83.
15 T.M.P. Mahadevan, Philosophy of Advaita, pp. 232-233.
touchstones of the spirit
48
completely dependent on and inseparable from Brahman, neither in-
dependent nor real in itself. It is not different from Brahman on pain 
of contradicting Scriptural declarations of non-difference, but it is also 
not non-different from Brahman as there cannot be identity between 
the Real and the unreal. Nor can maya be both different and non-dif-
ferent as such contradictions cannot reside in one and the same thing. 
The relationship between maya and Brahman is thus tadatmya, neither 
identity nor difference nor both. A similar dialectic exposes maya’s 
status considered in terms of the Real. Maya is not real because it has 
no existence apart from Brahman, because it disappears at the dawn of 
knowledge, because it does not constitute a limit on Brahman. How-
ever, it is not altogether unreal because it does project the world of 
appearances. It is not both real and unreal because of contradiction. 
Maya is not possessed of parts. If it were partite it would have a be-
ginning and consequently the Lord and the jivas which are reflections 
thereof would have a beginning. Furthermore, maya with a beginning 
would necessitate another maya as its cause and there would thus be 
a contingence of infinite regress. However, maya cannot be partless 
because of the contingency of its not being the primal cause. It is the 
cause only of partite phenomena, and cannot be both partite and im-
partite because of contradiction. 
Maya, has a phenomenal and relative character and is an appear-
ance only (vivarta). It is of the nature of superimposition (adhyasa) 
and is removable by right knowledge. Its locus is Brahman but Brah-
man is in no way affected by maya. Maya is beginningless (anadi), for 
time arises only within it; it is unthinkable (acintya), for all thought is 
subject to it; it is indescribable (anirvacaniya), for all language results 
from it.16 Because its nature is outside the determination of normal 
human categories it is indeterminable (anirvaniya) and indefinable. 
Maya, indeed, is most strange!
Before moving into an exploration of Shankara’s views on the rela-
tionship of the world to Brahman and the role of maya in “mediating” 
this relationship, a small digression: it is sometimes suggested, often 
obliquely rather than directly, that the classical Indian view of reality 
is somewhat idiosyncratic. We have seen in the Vedanta the refusal to 
16 See E. Deutsch, Advaita Vedanta: A Philosophical Reconstruction (Honolulu: Uni-
versity of Hawaii Press, 1969), p. 29, and “Introduction” to Crest-Jewel of Discrimina-
tion, pp. 16ff.
shankara’s doctrine of maya
49
equate the “real” with the existent. Such a position sits uncomfortably 
with modern Western notions derived from our recent intellectual his-
tory. However, in the long view it is the modern notion of reality (as 
the existent) which looks eccentric, even within the Western tradition. 
A view more in accord with the Vedanta is everywhere to be found in 
traditional wisdoms. Here we shall restrict ourselves to two illustrative 
examples. St. Augustine: 
I beheld these others beneath Thee, and saw that they neither alto-
gether are, nor altogether are not. An existence they have because 
they are from Thee; and yet no existence, because they are not what 
Thou art. For only that really is that remains unchangeably. . . .17
Here we not only see a view quite in agreement with the Indian 
insistence on eternality and immutability but a line of thinking which, 
like Shankara’s, accommodates certain paradoxical possibilities—
things which “neither altogether are, nor altogether are not.” From 
Hermes Trismegistus: 
That which is dissoluble is destructible; only that which is indis-
soluble is everlasting. . . . Nothing that is corporeal is real; only that 
which is incorporeal is devoid of illusion.18
This anticipates some of the themes of Shankara’s doctrine of maya.
 
*
As we have seen already the nub of the problem confronting Advaita 
was the relationship of the empirical world of multiple phenomena to 
Brahman.19 It was to this question that much of Shankara’s work was 
addressed and it is here that the doctrine of maya comes into full play. 
The Upanishadic view had suggested that the world, in all its multiplic-
17 Augustine, Confessions, 9.vii (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969) (italics mine).
18 From Stobaei, quoted in W. Perry, A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom, p. 101.
19 Ultimately it is obviously improper to speak of any “relationship” between Brahman 
and the world as it is anchored in a dualist conception which Advaita seeks to over-
come. However such a notion is expedient if this caution is kept in mind. Further, we 
will be less wide of the mark if we speak of the relationship of the world to Brahman, 
but not the obverse.
touchstones of the spirit
50
ity, emanates from, subsists in, and ultimately merges in Brahman. In 
the Mundaka Upanishad, by way of example, we find this: 
As a spider spreads and withdraws (its thread). . .
so out of the Immutable does the phenomenal universe arise.
And this: 
As a thousand sparks from a blazing fire
Leap forth each like the other,
So friend, from the Imperishable, modes of being
Variously spring forth and return again thereto.
This “projection” of Brahman is not to be understood as something 
other than Brahman. As the same Upanishad tells us,
Immortal in very truth is Brahman
East, west, north and south
below, above Brahman projects Itself
Brahman is the whole universe.20
This is by no means the pantheistic notion wherein the cosmos 
and the Absolute are identified, but is to be understood in the spirit of 
the old Rabbinic dictum: “God is the dwelling place of the universe; 
but the universe is not the dwelling place of God.”21 The Shvetashva-
tara Upanishad describes the Lord (Ishvara) as the mayin, the won-
der-working powerful Being out of whom the world arises.22 The word 
maya is used in this sense in the Rig Veda. 
Shankara’s purpose was to make explicit and to explain more fully 
the Upanishadic view that the universe is really only in the nature of an 
appearance, devoid of any ultimate ontological reality. Following the 
Upanishads Badarayana had insisted on the sole reality of Brahman, 
“The alone, supreme, eternal” which “through the glamour of Igno-
rance, like a magician, appears manifold. . . .”23 Shankara’s metaphysic 
20 Mundaka Upanishad 1.i.vii & 2.ii.xii.
21 Quoted in Radhakrishnan: Selected Writings on Philosophy, Religion and Culture, ed. 
R.A. McDermott (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1970), p. 146.
22 Shvetashvatara Upanishad, 4.x.
23 Per P. Duessen, The System of the Vedanta (New York: Dover, 1973), p. 187.
shankara’s doctrine of maya
51
elucidates the nature of this manifold. The key principle is maya and 
the crucial process adhyasa (superimposition). We have already estab-
lished that 
[T]he term maya combines the meanings of “productive power” and 
“universal illusion”; it is the inexhaustible play of manifestations, 
deployments, combinations, and reverberations, a play with which 
Atma clothes itself even as the ocean clothes itself with a mantle of 
foam, which is ever renewed and never the same.24 
“Maya” can be used to signify both the principle which effects the 
illusory world, the power which superimposes the manifold and sen-
suous on the supersensuous Brahman, and the effects of this power, 
i.e., the world. In the ensuing discussion the sense in which it is being 
used will be clear from the context. 
The relationship of the world to Brahman, according to Shankara, 
is paradoxical. The world is illusory, an appearance only. Now, sev-
eral obvious questions present themselves: if there is only one Reality 
(Brahman) how can its non-duality be sustained in the faceof the mul-
tiple world? What is the nature of the illusory world of maya? In what 
sense can we speak of the world and Brahman as being both different 
and non-different? Is not Brahman (the cause) affected by maya (the 
effect)? What is Shankara’s stance in regard to Ishvara and his relation-
ship to maya? 
The first question has already been partially answered. The phe-
nomenal world, simply, is not real—it is not eternal and immutable, 
and it is sublated by the experience of Brahman. We recall the words of 
the Bhagavad Gita: “of the non-real there is no coming to be: of the real 
there is no ceasing to be.”25 The world is not real. It has no ontological 
or ultimate status. Nevertheless, while the world is not real (sat), nor, 
says Shankara, is it altogether unreal (asat). It is apparently real (vya-
vaharika). It is perceived and it exhibits spatial, temporal, and causal 
order. “There could be no non-existence” (of external entities) says 
Shankara, because “external realities are perceived.”26 It is the existence 
24 F. Schuon, Logic and Transcendence: A New Translation with Selected Letters 
(Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2009), p. 75n.
25 Bhagavad Gita 2:16.
26 The Brahma-Sutra Bhasya of Sankaracarya, trans. Swami Gambirananda (Calcutta: 
Advaita Ashrama, 1965), pp. 418ff.
touchstones of the spirit
52
and the apparent reality of the world which is in need of explanation. 
It has often been remarked that maya can be viewed from several 
standpoints: from that of mundane experience, the phenomenal world 
of maya is real; from that of the inquiring mind maya and all her ef-
fects are a riddle, a puzzle, a Sphinx; from the viewpoint of the real-
ized being, maya simply is not. The problematic relationship between 
maya and Brahman is only apparent from the empirical, worldly, and 
maya-created point of view. It is only because of ignorance (avidya) 
that we are unable to see the non-duality of Brahman. Non-duality ex-
ists a priori: the separation of the world from Brahman is an illusory 
“fissure” which from its own standpoint, within the limits imposed by 
the very nature of maya, is enigmatic. Right Knowledge reveals the 
non-duality of Brahman quite uncompromised and unqualified by the 
phenomenal realm.27 
Clearly this still leaves many questions unanswered: If this world is 
illusory, how is the illusion to be explained? What is the nature of the 
illusion? Shankara distinguishes three kinds of illusion: a phenomenal 
or “objective” illusion such as our waking perception of the empirical 
world (vyavaharika); a private, subjective illusion such as a dream; and 
a third kind of illusion, altogether unreal, non-existent, and absurd, of 
which the hare’s horn is the most oft-cited example.28 
The illusion of the world is of the first kind: the world is not simply 
a hallucination or a chimera, nor is it an absurd non-entity. Maya, and 
thus the world, is not real but it is existent. It is certainly not non-exis-
tent. Why does this illusory world have an apparently objective homo-
geneity? Because the world is not an illusion of each particular indi-
vidual, in which case each individual would “dream” a different world, 
but an illusion of the human collectivity. The empirical and objective 
“solidity” of the world proves not its reality but the collective nature of 
the illusion.29 Mircea Eliade has written of the association of maya with 
27 See F. Schuon, Logic and Transcendence, p. 185. Shankara’s argument is supported 
by the theory of vivartavada which demonstrates that the world of maya is only an ap-
parent manifestation of Brahman. For commentary see E. Deutsch, Advaita Vedanta, 
pp. 27-2. It should be noted that Brahman, properly speaking, is non-dual rather than 
one as the category of number is not applicable.
28 See “Introduction” to Crest-Jewel of Discrimination, p. 15.
29 F. Schuon, Gnosis: Divine Wisdom, A New Translation with Selected Letters (Bloom-
ington, IN: World Wisdom, 2006), p. 54, and Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts: 
A New Translation with Selected Letters (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2007), p. 
shankara’s doctrine of maya
53
temporality. His commentary is worth quoting at some length:
[T]he veil of maya is an image-formula expressing the ontological 
unreality both of the world and of all human experience: we em-
phasize ontological, for neither the world nor human experience 
participates in absolute Being. The physical world and our human 
experience also are constituted by the universal becoming, by the 
temporal: they are therefore illusory, created and destroyed as they 
are by Time. But this does not mean they have no existence or are 
creations of my imagination. The world is not a mirage. . . . The 
physical world and my vital and psychic experience exist, but they 
exist only in Time. . . . Consequently, judged by the scale of absolute 
Being, the world and every experience dependent upon temporality 
are illusory. . . . Many centuries before Heidegger, Indian thought 
had identified, in temporality, the “fated” dimension of all existence. 
. . . In other words, the discovery of historicity, as the specific mode 
of being of man in the world, corresponds to what the Indians have 
long called our situation in maya. . . . In reality our true “self ” . . . has 
nothing to do with the multiple situations of our history.30 
 
Whence comes this illusion and how is it maintained? The brief 
answer is that it derives from maya as avidya (ignorance, or nescience) 
and is generated and sustained by adhyasa (superimposition). Some 
commentators have distinguished avidya from maya, associating 
avidya not only with the negative aspect of maya and thus with the jiva 
but not with Ishvara. Shankara himself used the two terms more or less 
interchangeably. The question has generated a philosophical squabble 
but Mahadevan has persuasively argued that the distinction cannot 
be maintained with any philosophic integrity. He exposes the faulty 
constructions of some of the post-Shankaran commentators who have 
been bent on separating avidya from maya. Nevertheless Mahadevan 
does concede that the distinction does have some empirical utility: 
When prakriti generates projection or when it conforms to the desire 
of the agent as is the case with Ishvara it is called maya in empiri-
cal usage. When it obscures or when it is independent of the agent’s 
will it is known as nescience (avidya). Apart from this adjunct-con-
179-180.
30 M. Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (London: Collins, 1972), pp. 239-240.
touchstones of the spirit
54
ditioned distinction, there is no difference between maya and ne-
science.31
It is in this sense that some speak of maya as being cosmic in sig-
nificance, avidya subjective. Until the dawn of knowledge all are sub-
ject to ensnarement in the web of appearances. This is the source of 
the illusion. The “mechanism,” as it were, through which the illusion 
is generated and sustained is adhyasa, the super-imposing of limita-
tions and multiplicities upon Brahman. Because of avidya and through 
adhyasa we mistakenly take phenomenal distinctions to be real. This, 
according to Gaudapada, is like seeing footprints of birds in the sky.32 
Padmapada, one of Shankara’s disciples, explained that superim-
position means that manifestation of the nature of something in an-
other which is not of that nature.” So it is when one says, “I am deaf ” 
where a property of the organ of hearing is imposed on the self.33 An 
example Shankara himself used was “the sky is blue.”34 In like manner 
we couple the unreal with the Real and vice versa.35 As a recent com-
mentator has observed,
The main or primary application of adhyasa is made with respect to 
the self. It is the superimposition on the Self (Atman, Brahman) of 
what does not properly belong to the Self (finitude, change) and the 
superimposition on the non-self of what does properly belong to the 
Self (infinitude, eternality) that constitute avidya.36Thus maya makes possible the “impossible”—the appearance of 
the infinite and unconditioned as if finite and contingent. 
We can now see how and why maya makes the world-nature in-
scrutable to the discursive mind. Maya is an “ontic-noetic state where-
31 T.M.P. Mahadevan, Philosophy of Advaita, p. 231. See also P.T. Raju, Idealistic 
Thought of India (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1953), p. 115.
32 Gaudapada, Mandukya-Karika III.48, IV.28, quoted in T.M.P. Mahadevan, Ramana 
Maharshi, p. 120.
33 E. Deutsch, Advaita Vedanta, p. 34.
34 Crest-Jewel of Discrimination, p. 62. 
35 Crest-Jewel of Discrimination, p. 62.
36 E. Deutsch, Advaita Vedanta, p. 34
shankara’s doctrine of maya
55
in limitations (upadhis) are imposed on Reality.”37 All attachments, 
aversions, dreams, fears, and thoughts, all memories, cognitions, and 
mental modifications of whatever kind are grounded in maya. “The 
mind which is a product of maya cannot in full measure understand 
the nature of its parent.”38 It is only intuition (in the full and charac-
teristically Indian sense—jnana) that can apprehend the Brahman-na-
ture. In this context it is worth remembering that in a metaphysic such 
as Shankara’s “logical proof is no more than a thoroughly provisional 
crystallization of intuition.”39 In this order maya is not, in fact, inexpli-
cable but only not self-explanatory.40 
The second question we posed in reference to the world-Brahman 
relationship: how we are to understand the “difference” and “non-dif-
ference”? We have already seen how in strictly logical terms this re-
lationship can only be enunciated negatively, i.e. maya and Brahman 
are neither different, nor non-different, nor both. Nevertheless we 
can speak provisionally, metaphorically as it were, of “difference” and 
“non-difference.” The difference of maya and Brahman is clear enough. 
It is the non-difference which is more puzzling. In metaphysical terms 
the following principial demonstration articulates the relationship 
precisely: 
That the Real and the unreal are “not different” does not in any way 
imply either the unreality of the Self or the reality of the world; the 
Real is not “nondifferent” with respect to the unreal, but the unreal is 
“non-different” with respect to the Real—not insofar as it is unreal-
ity, but insofar as it is a “lesser Reality,” which is nonetheless “extrin-
sically unreal” in relation to absolute Reality.41 
Whilst ultimately unreal, “cosmic existence partakes of the char-
acter of the real and the unreal.”42 The relationship of the relative to the 
37 E. Deutsch, Advaita Vedanta, pp. 28 & 30.
38 T.M.P. Mahadevan, Philosophy of Advaita, p. 250 & p. 248. See also J.G. Arapura, 
“Maya and the Discourse about Brahman” in The Problem of Two Truths, p. 111, and S. 
Radhakrishnan, Selected Writings, p. 140.
39 F. Schuon, Spiritual Perspectives, p. 3.
40 M. Hiriyana, The Essentials of Indian Philosophy, p. 161.
41 F. Schuon, Spiritual Perspectives, p.103.
42 S. Radhakrishnan, Selected Writings, p. 143.
touchstones of the spirit
56
Absolute is elaborated in one fashion or another in all traditional meta-
physics and is to be found in the esoteric and sapiential dimension of 
most religious traditions, albeit couched in the vocabulary appropriate 
to the tradition in question. It can, for instance, be formulated no less 
precisely in the terminology of the theistic Occidental traditions, i.e. in 
terms not of Brahman and maya but in terms of God and man. This is 
provided that we remember that,
In the three Semitic monotheisms, the name “God” necessarily em-
braces all that belongs to the Principle [the Absolute] with no re-
striction whatever, although the exoterisms obviously consider the 
ontological aspect alone.43 
In other words, “God” refers, in this context, to the trans-ontolog-
ical and Beyond-Being “dimension” of Reality and not to personalized 
theological notions of God which correspond not to nirguna-Brahman 
but to saguna-Brahman which encompasses Ishvara. One such formu-
lation explicates the relationship this way:
That we are conformed to God—“made in His image”—this is cer-
tain; otherwise we would not exist. 
That we are contrary to God, this is also certain; otherwise we 
should not be different from God. 
Apart from analogy with God, we would be nothing. 
Apart from opposition to God, we would be God. 
The separation between man and God is at one and the same time 
absolute and relative. . . . The separation is absolute because God 
alone is real, and no continuity is possible between nothingness and 
Reality, but the separation is relative—or rather “nonabsolute”—be-
cause nothing is outside God. 
In a sense it might be said that this separation is absolute from 
man to God and relative from God to man.44 
This kind of enunciation is closest in spirit to the Sufic tradition but 
similar statements of the Absolute-Relative can be found in other Oc-
43 F. Schuon, Light on the Ancient Worlds: A New Translation with Selected Letters 
(Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2006), p. 75n.
44 F. Schuon, Spiritual Perspectives, p. 171.
shankara’s doctrine of maya
57
cidental wisdoms, not excluding the Christian and Judaic.
Our next question: is not Brahman in some sense affected, con-
taminated, as it were, by maya? Are not the effects implicit in the cause? 
By no means, says Shankara. We shall not here rehearse the theories 
of apparent manifestation (vivartavada) or transformation (parinama-
vada) but simply recall the famous analogy with which Shankara re-
solved this problem.
As the magician is not affected by this illusion (maya) which he him-
self has created, because it is without reality (avatsu), so also Para-
matman is not affected by the illusion of Samsara. . . . Consequently 
it is false to hold that the cause is polluted by the qualities, material-
ity, etc. of the effect, if they return into that essence.45
The illusion is caused by the power of the magician and the igno-
rance of the audience: for the magician there is no illusion whatsoever. 
So with Brahman, maya is illusion until the dawn of knowledge; thence 
maya is not. Brahman, says Shankara, cannot be affected by maya just 
as the desert sands cannot be muddied by the waters of a mirage.46
Maya is sometimes referred to as “the power of Ishvara” which 
brings us to the question of the place of Ishvara in the Advaitin scheme 
and his connections with maya. Ishvara’s nature is of saguna-Brahman 
which might roughly be signified as “qualified Brahman,”47 the qualifi-
cations having only an ad hoc validity and existing only from a strictly 
maya-based point of view. In a sense Ishvara can be represented as 
the cosmic parallel to the jiva with the qualification that Ishvara re-
mains untouched by avidya. Further, “Ishvara is the reflection of Brah-
man in maya, and the jiva is the same reflection of Brahman in avidya, 
which is only “part” of maya.”48 Brahman thus appears as Ishvara when 
considered from the relatively ignorant viewpoint of the jiva. As Vi-
vekananda so aptly put it, “Personal God [Ishvara] is the reading of 
the Impersonal by the human mind.”49 Brahman is in all senses prior 
45 Shankara quoted in P. Duessen, System of the Vedanta, p. 275. See also p. 278.
46 Crest-Jewel of Discrimination, p. 49.
47 M. Hiriyana, Essentials of Indian Philosophy, pp. 164-165. See also F. Schuon, “The 
Mystery of the Veil,” Studies in Comparative Religion, 11:2, Spring 1977, p. 71.
48 P.T. Raju, Idealistic Thought of India, pp. 116ff.
49 “Introduction” to Crest-Jewel of Discrimination, p. 23.
touchstones of the spirit
58
to Ishvara. Metaphysically speaking “Maya non-manifested . . . is Be-
ing: Ishvara.”50 Here we find a principle analogous to Meister Eckhart’s 
distinction between God (the ontological, Being “dimension” of the 
Absolute; Ishvara) and the God-head (the Absolute, Beyond-Being, 
unqualified; Brahman).51 
Considered in religious rather than metaphysical terms Ishvara 
becomes thecreator of the universe, the great magician who conjures 
up the spectacle of the realm, out of whom the world arises. Being un-
touched by avidya and divine in nature, Ishvara also becomes an exem-
plar and a focus of bhaktic worship. Whilst ruthlessly non-dualistic in 
his metaphysics Shankara himself addressed prayers to the deities. He 
was sympathetically disposed towards bhaktic forms of worship, deny-
ing only that ultimate realization could be reached by such practices. 
Certainly he did not see bhakti only as a concession to the weakness of 
the popular mind—as some neo-Vedantins would have it. Ishvara not 
only provides a focus for bhakti but also helps to bring the world into a 
more immediately intelligible relationship with Brahman. 
Up to this point we have, for the most part, been considering the 
negative aspects of maya—illusion, concealment, avidya. Mention of 
Ishvara provides a bridge to the other side of maya, the aspect of pro-
jection and of “divine art,” and to the related notion of lila. Maya is 
indeed “cosmic illusion” but is 
also “divine play.” It is the great theophany, the “unveiling” of God 
“in Himself and by Himself,” as the Sufis would say. Maya is like a 
magic fabric woven from a warp that veils and a weft that unveils; 
a quasi-incomprehensible intermediary between the finite and the 
Infinite—at least from our point of view as creatures—it has all the 
shimmering ambiguity appropriate to its half-cosmic, half-divine 
nature.52 
As this passage suggests, the Sufic doctrine of the veil is, in some 
respects, analogous to the doctrine of maya as articulated in Advaita 
Vedanta. Maya has also been called the principle of “self-expression” 
50 F. Schuon, Light on the Ancient World, p. 81n.
51 For an accessible discussion of this distinction see H. Smith, Forgotten Truth: The 
Primordial Tradition (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 54-59.
52 F. Schuon, Light on the Ancient World, p. 75.
shankara’s doctrine of maya
59
(i.e., Ishvara). In this context:
Creation is expression. It is not a making of something out of noth-
ing. It is not making so much as becoming. It is the self-projection of 
the Supreme. Everything exists in the secret abode of the Supreme. 
The primary reality contains within itself the source of its own mo-
tion and change.53 
This perspective on maya also embraces the idea of lila to which 
we will return presently. But first a digression is in order to meet pos-
sible objections to the notion that maya simultaneously has both a 
negative and a positive character. 
How is it, it may be asked, that maya both conceals and projects? 
This is the kind of question likely to vex an either/or line of ratiocina-
tive thought. The objection is best met by analogy. We turn here to 
Frithjof Schuon, who illuminates many traditional doctrines in terms 
intelligible across the linguistic and symbolic barriers of the various 
traditional wisdoms: 
It is very easy to label as “vague” and “contradictory” something 
one cannot understand because of a failure of “intellectual vision.” 
In general, rationalist thinkers refuse to accept a truth that presents 
contradictory aspects and is situated, seemingly beyond grasping, 
between two extrinsic and negative enunciations. But there are some 
realities that can be expressed in no other way. The ray that proceeds 
from a light is itself light inasmuch as it illuminates, but it is not the 
light from which it proceeded; therefore it is neither this light nor 
something other than this light; in fact it is nothing but light, though 
growing ever weaker in proportion to its distance from its source. 
A faint glow is light for the darkness it illuminates but darkness for 
the light whence it emanates. Similarly Maya is at once light and 
darkness: as “divine art” it is light inasmuch as it reveals the secrets 
of Atma; it is darkness inasmuch as it hides Atma. As darkness it is 
“ignorance,” avidya.54 
The idea of lila can also be explored in another, larger context. A 
perennial line of questioning which inevitably arises in any consid-
53 S. Radhakrishnan, Selected Writings, p. 141.
54 F. Schuon, Spiritual Perspectives, pp. 104-105.
touchstones of the spirit
60
eration of the religious doctrines of creation and manifestation runs 
along these lines: why does manifestation occur in the first place? Why, 
in crude terms, does the world exist? Here we shall not concern our-
selves with questions of beginning and end, of temporality and escha-
tology, which, in Vedanta, are always subordinate to the inquiry into 
“the relation of ground and consequent.” Rather, the question here is 
this: is there any “explanation” for the appearance, as it were, of maya? 
Here we will touch lightly on three responses to this question: the con-
ventional Vedantin attitude; the notion of lila; and a metaphysical “ex-
planation” not itself drawn from Shankara’s metaphysic but in no way 
incompatible with it.
Radhakrishnan has articulated the typical Vedantin response to 
these kinds of questions when he writes:
If we ask why the Supreme has this . . . character, why it is what it is 
[and thus the “why” of maya] we can only accept it as a given real-
ity. It is the ultimate irrationality in the sense that no logical deri-
vation of the given is possible. It is apprehended by us in spiritual 
consciousness and accounts for the nature of experience in all its 
aspects. It is the only philosophical explanation that is possible or 
necessary.55 
In other words certain questions about maya cannot be resolved out-
side the plenary experience. Elsewhere Radhakrishnan reminds us 
that, “If we raise the question as to how [or why] the finite rises from 
out of the bosom of the infinite, Shankara says that it is an incompre-
hensible mystery. . . .”56 As Murti has observed, the doctrine of maya is 
not, in itself, an explanation of this mystery.57 
As we have seen already, any attempt to explain the “creation” 
or “origin” of the world is bound to fail not only because the mind is 
trapped in maya but also because the very notion of creation is an er-
ror. As Gaudapada stressed, “this is the supreme truth: nothing what-
ever is born” (or “created”).58 It is only when we have torn the veil of 
55 S. Radhakrishnan, Selected Writings, p. 141.
56 S. Radhakrishnan, The Hindu View of Life (London: Unwin, 1974), pp. 48-49.
57 T.R.V. Murti, “The Individual in Indian Religious Thought” in The Indian Mind: 
Essentials of Indian Philosophy and Culture, ed. C. Moore (Honolulu: University of 
Hawaii Press, 1967), p. 337.
58 Gaudapada quoted in T.M.P. Mahadevan, Ramana Maharshi, p. 120.
shankara’s doctrine of maya
61
maya, as it were, that we can see that this kind of question is ultimately 
meaningless.59 
All this notwithstanding, the notion of lila, is in some sense a kind of 
metaphorical explanation. In the Brahma-Sutra Bhasya Shankara says: 
The activity of the Lord . . . may be supposed to be more sport [lila] 
proceeding from his own nature, without reference to any purpose.60 
This recalls Krishna’s words in the Bhagavad Gita. 
There is naught in the three worlds that I have need to do, nor any-
thing I have not gotten that I might get, yet I participate in action.61 
This idea of the playfulness of the Creator Lord is found in the Rig 
Veda, the Upanishads, and the Gita though the word lila as such is not 
always used.62 The notion conveys that Ishvara’s creation answers to no 
compelling necessity or constraint but arises out of an inherent exu-
berance or joy. It is spontaneous, purposeless, without responsibility, 
or moral consequence—in short, like play. 
Ramakrishna was fond of recounting the following story which 
contains something of this idea of the playfulness of Ishvara. (The an-
ecdote is perfumed with the scents of Hindu spirituality.) 
Once there came a saddhu here [Ramakrishna would relate] who 
had a beautiful glow on his face. He just sat and smiled. Twice a day, 
once in themorning and once in the evening, he’d come out of his 
room and look around. He’d look at the trees, the bushes, the sky, and 
Ganges and he’d raise his arms and dance, beside himself with joy. Or 
he’d roll on the ground, laughing and exclaiming “Bravo! What fun! 
How wonderful it is, this maya. What an illusion God has conjured 
up!” This was his way of doing worship.63
59 P.T. Raju, Idealistic Thought, pp. 113-114.
60 Shankara, Brahma-Sutra Bhasya II.i.33 in E. Deutsch, Advaita Vedanta, p. 38. For 
the context see Swami Gambhirananda’s translation, p. 361.
61 Bhagavad Gita 3:22-25. See A.K. Coomaraswamy, “Lila” in Selected Papers: Meta-
physics, p. 150.
62 A.K. Coomaraswamy, “Lila,” pp. 151ff. See also “Play and Seriousness” in the same 
volume, pp. 156-158.
63 C. Isherwood, Ramakrishna and His Disciples (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1974), 
touchstones of the spirit
62
It may be noted in passing that the idea of God’s playfulness is not 
peculiar to the Hindu tradition. This formulation from Meister Eck-
hart, for instance, is in no way at odds with Shankara’s: “There has al-
ways been this play going on in the Father-nature . . . sport and players 
are the same.”64 Or this, from Boehme: “The creation is the same sport 
out of himself.”65
The third response is the metaphysical “resolution” of the problem 
of manifestation. To translate the following formulation back into spe-
cifically Hindu terms we need only substitute Brahman for “the Abso-
lute” and “Essence,” and maya for “illusion.” 
As for the question of the “origin” of illusion, it is amongst those 
questions that can be resolved—or rather there is nothing in it to 
resolve—though this resolution cannot be adjusted to suit all logi-
cal needs; there are demonstrations which, whether they are under-
stood or not, are sufficient in themselves and indeed constitute pil-
lars of metaphysical doctrine. . . . [T]he infinitude of Reality implies 
the possibility of its own negation and . . . since this negation is not 
possible within the Absolute itself, it is necessary that this “possibil-
ity of the impossible” should be realized in an “inward dimension” 
that is “neither real nor unreal,” a dimension that is real on its own 
level while being unreal in respect of the Essence; thus we are every-
where in touch with the Absolute, from which we cannot emerge but 
which at the same time is infinitely distant, no thought ever circum-
scribing it.66 
While Shankara maintains the traditional reticence on this ques-
tion it is clear that such a demonstration is precisely attuned to his 
metaphysics—this is anything but accidental. The harmony of all sa-
piential doctrines, of metaphysics expounded within the protective 
cadre of a properly constituted religious tradition, derives not from 
any subjective or psychological source. Rather, it springs from the 
direct apprehension of Reality which is the ultimate purpose of the 
p. 103.
64 A.K. Coomaraswamy, “Lila,” p. 148.
65 A.K. Coomaraswamy, “Lila,” p. 148.
66 F. Schuon, Gnosis: Divine Wisdom, p. 58 As Schuon has also written, “Divine Maya, 
Relativity, is the necessary consequence of the very Infinitude of the Principle. . .” (Log-
ic and Transcendence, p. 75). 
shankara’s doctrine of maya
63
gnostic or jnanic dimension within each religion.67 Such metaphysics 
must be sharply differentiated from the self-contradictory notion of 
metaphysics as a branch of profane philosophy, i.e. a so-called meta-
physics deriving from purely subjective and mental resources, cut off 
from the spiritual disciplines and bereft of the supports transmitted by 
a religious tradition. 
In Shankara’s teachings the doctrine of maya is integral not only 
to a profound metaphysic but to the spiritual therapies which were its 
inevitable accompaniment. Neither Shankara nor any other Hindu 
metaphysician had the slightest interest in the doctrine as an intellec-
tual curiosity but only as part of a way towards Right Knowledge, to-
wards liberation. Certainly the doctrine of maya, properly understood, 
never led anyone into “pessimism” or “nihilism” such as is postulated 
by some critics of Hinduism. The denial of the ultimate reality of the 
world was inextricably linked with the affirmation that enlightenment 
and liberation were possible, possible indeed within this life. To sepa-
rate the doctrine of maya from the belief in jivanmukti can only lead 
to the sort of lop-sided view that falls prey to the prejudices mentioned 
above. On this issue we can do no better than recall the words of Eliade 
when he wrote: 
[P]erhaps more than any other civilization, that of India loves and 
reverences Life, and enjoys it at every level. For maya is not [a] gra-
tuitous cosmic illusion. . . . [T]o become conscious of the cosmic 
illusion does not mean, in India, the discovery that all is Nothing-
ness, but simply that no experience in the world of History has any 
ontological validity and therefore, that our human condition ought 
not to be regarded as an end in itself. . . .68 
The doctrine of maya helps us to develop an attitude in which the 
world can be rightly regarded. If we are mindful of the fugitive and il-
lusory nature of the world then the realm of maya itself can help us in 
67 Contemporary and modernistic commentators, tyrannized by ratiocinative modes 
of thought, often betray their own ignorance in their attempts to criticize Shankara’s 
doctrines. Thus, for example, Renou when he asserts that the idea of maya “disguises 
the mutual irreducibility of the One and the Many” (L. Renou, Religions of Ancient 
India [New York: Schocken, 1968], p. 56). This signals a failure to understand that from 
the enlightened point of view, the “Many” is not.
68 M. Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, pp. 242-243.
touchstones of the spirit
64
our quest—were it otherwise the Hindus would not have elaborated 
complex cosmological and other sciences.69 The essential purpose of 
the doctrine is to free us from the snares of material existence, to de-
liver us from the countless solicitations of the world which only tighten 
the bonds of ignorance and chain us to the samsaric wheel.
This kind of teaching we find on all sides where spiritual welfare 
is the focus of attention. A few eloquent examples derived from other 
traditions will recall the universality of this theme in religious teach-
ings:
The phenomena of life may be likened unto a dream, a phantom, a 
bubble, a shadow, a glistening dew, or lightning flash, and thus they 
ought to be contemplated. (Prajna-Paramita)70 
The world is finite, and truly that other is infinite: image and form 
are a barrier to that Reality. (Rumi)71 
A life devoted to the interests and enjoyments of this world, spent 
and wasted in the slavery of earthly desires, may be truly called a 
dream, as having all the shortness, vanity, and delusion of a dream. 
. . . (William Law)72 
It is Shankara’s purpose to awaken us from this dream, to awaken 
us to the true Self and to Reality through Right Knowledge. The point 
of doctrines like that of maya is to lead us beyond the level where the 
question is asked (the level of mental modifications) into the realm 
where we can experience the answer. Once the plenary, unitive experi-
ence of realization has dispelled our ignorance maya no longer is. As 
the Shvetashvatara Upanishad tells us:
 
By becoming what one is
The whole world of appearance will once again
Be lost to sight at last.73
69 See S.H. Nasr, Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man (London: Allen 
& Unwin, 1976), pp. 188-189.
70 Quoted in W. Perry, A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom, p. 96.
71 Quoted in W. Perry, A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom, p. 112.
72 Quoted in W. Perry, A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom, p. 95.
73 Shvetashvatara Upanishad 1.x.
shankara’s doctrine of maya
65
Herein lies the purpose, the justification, the end of all Shankara’s 
doctrines. The metaphysics Shankara elaborated is not only the crown-
jewel of India’sFrithjof 
Schuon declared that “traditions having a prehistoric origin are, sym-
bolically speaking, made for ‘space’ and not for ‘time’. . . .”4 It follows 
from these general observations that the slaying of Abel—the violent 
extirpation of the primordial nomadic cultures—not only constitutes 
a drastic contraction of human possibilities but is actually a cosmic 
1 F. Schuon, Light on the Ancient Worlds: A New Translation with Selected Letters 
(Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2006), p. 25. 
2 R. Guénon, The Reign of Quantity & The Signs of the Times (Ghent, NY: Sophia Per-
ennis et Universalis, 1995), p. 178.
3 R. Guénon, Reign of Quantity, p. 180.
4 F. Schuon, Light on the Ancient Worlds, p. 8.
touchstones of the spirit
4
desecration. Recall the words of Marco Pallis, on the destruction of the 
traditional and largely nomadic culture of Tibet:
One can truly say that this remote land behind the snowy rampart 
of the Himalaya had become like the chosen sanctuary for all those 
things whereof the historical discarding had caused our present pro-
fane civilization, the first of its kind, to come into being. . . . [T]
he violation of this sanctuary and the dissipation of the sacred in-
fluences hitherto concentrated there becomes an event of properly 
cosmic significance, of which the ulterior consequences for a world 
that tacitly condoned the outrage or, in many cases, openly counte-
nanced it on the plea that it brought “progress” to a reluctant people 
have yet to ripen fully.5 
Similar considerations may be applied to more or less analogous 
cases, whether we think of the fate of the American Indians, the Aus-
tralian Aborigines, the Inuit, the Bedouin, the Gypsies, the Bushmen 
of the Kalahari, the Maori, or any other peoples who have been tram-
pled by the juggernaut of modernity. 
Since the genocidal ravages of the nineteenth century a great deal 
has been written about the destruction of the Indian cultures of North 
America. There have also been many attempts, with varying success, 
to reanimate at least some aspects of the ancestral way of life. It need 
hardly be stated that many of the writers on these subjects are alto-
gether impervious to the deeper significance of the events and pro-
cesses which they seek to explain. On the other hand, Frithjof Schuon’s 
oeuvre comprises a peerless explication of the sophia perennis which 
informs all integral traditions, including those of primordial origin. 
His writings, along with those of Guénon and Ananda Coomaraswa-
my, have fulfilled a providential function by answering to certain spiri-
tual necessities arising from the peculiar cyclic conditions of the time. 
Amongst Schuon’s most poignant writings are those on the American 
Plains Indians, many of which were gathered together in The Feathered 
Sun (1990),6 accompanied by reproductions of his luminous paintings 
on Indian themes. The metaphysical and cosmological doctrines of the 
5 M. Pallis, review of The New Religions, by Jacob Needleman, Studies in Comparative 
Religion, 5:3, 1971, pp. 189-190.
6 F. Schuon, The Feathered Sun: Plains Indians in Art and Philosophy (Bloomington, 
IN: World Wisdom Books, 1990).
“melodies from the beyond”
5
Indians, the symbolic language of their myths, rituals, and art, the ar-
cane practices of shamanism, and many other aspects of their religious 
life are elucidated with great clarity, profundity, and beauty. Schuon’s 
writings on the religious heritage of the American Indians furnish us 
with an exemplary account of a mythologically-based spiritual econ-
omy; what follows is an application of the principles expounded by 
Schuon to another spiritual heritage, that of the Australian Aborigines. 
Background
Since the arrival of the Europeans, late in the eighteenth century, at-
titudes to Australia’s indigenous inhabitants have ranged from sen-
timental romanticism, to deep hostility and contempt, to misguided 
paternalism. The Aborigine has been cast in various roles: the “Noble 
Savage”; a harmless and infantile figure of fun; an embodiment of all 
that is morally repugnant in man’s nature; an anthropological relic of 
the Stone Age; a biological curio; a victim of a divine curse; a social 
misfit incapable of living a responsible and productive life. The ste-
reotypes have changed under the pressure of circumstances and the 
shifting ideological presuppositions of the observers but throughout 
them all runs the persistent European failure to understand Aboriginal 
culture, in particular that network of beliefs, values, relationships, and 
patterned behaviors which we can loosely assemble under the cano-
py of “Aboriginal religion.” The factors which have shaped European 
attitudes are precisely those which have fuelled the ongoing cultural 
vandalism of modern industrial societies against indigenous peoples 
across the globe. To name a few: ignorance about the culture in ques-
tion; assumptions about the cultural superiority of modern, industrial 
civilization, often buttressed by evolutionism of both a biological and 
social kind; an aggressive Christian exclusivism, operating as an ac-
complice to European colonialism; the reductive conceptual apparatus 
brought to the study of “primitive” cultures. The attitude to Aboriginal 
religion of most European observers has been “a melancholy mixture 
of neglect, condescension, and misunderstanding.”7 
From the outset there was a tenacious, often willful, refusal to ac-
knowledge that the Aborigines had any religion at all. In 1798, for in-
stance, an early colonist wrote:
7 M. Charlesworth et al. (ed.), Religion in Aboriginal Australia: An Anthology (St Lucia: 
University of Queensland Press, 1984), p. 1.
touchstones of the spirit
6
It has been asserted by an eminent divine, that no country has yet 
been discovered where some trace of religion was not to be found. 
From every observation and inquiry that I could make among these 
people, from the first to the last of my acquaintance with them, I can 
safely pronounce them an exception to this opinion.8
The recognition that the Aborigines had a vibrant spiritual life 
came slowly and was never more than partial. Such nineteenth century 
scholarship as there was concerning Aboriginal religion often rested 
on rotten foundations, namely, those vague but potent Victorian preju-
dices and cultural valuations which assumed the biological and cul-
tural superiority of the white man, the belief that British institutions 
marked the apotheosis of civilization, and the notion that the extinc-
tion of the indigenous peoples of Australia was not only inevitable but 
divinely appointed.9 Notions of cultural superiority had a long and sor-
did pedigree in Europe, refurbished by evolutionism in both its scien-
tific and sociological guises. The global decline of the darker races was 
a theme which enjoyed widespread currency in the Victorian era. Thus 
a late nineteenth century writer:
It seems a law of nature where two races whose stages of progression 
differ greatly are brought into contact, the inferior race is doomed to 
disappear. . . . The process seems to be in accordance with a natural 
law which . . . is clearly beneficial to mankind at large by providing 
for the survival of the fittest. Human progress has all been achieved 
by the spread of the progressive race and the squeezing out of the 
inferior ones. . . . It may be doubted that the Australian aborigine 
would ever have advanced much beyond the status of the neo-lithic 
races . . . and we need not therefore lament his disappearance.10
8 D. Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales (1798), quoted in 
W.E.H. Stanner, “Religion, Totemism and Symbolism” in Religion in Aboriginal Aus-
tralia, p. 138. Such a view is echoed in the words of an otherwise sympathetic mission-
ary, writing in the mid-nineteenth century: “The Aborigines of New Holland, in this 
part of the Colony, have no priesthood, no altar, no sacrifice, nor any religious service, 
strictly so-called;religious thought but a spiritual therapy addressed to 
our innermost nature and to our most profound needs.
67
chapter 4
“The Last Blade of Grass”: 
The Bodhisattva Ideal in the Mahayana
Doers of what is hard are the Bodhisattvas, the great beings who 
have set out to win supreme enlightenment. They do not wish to at-
tain their own private nirvana. On the contrary. They have surveyed 
the highly painful world of being, and yet, desirous to win supreme 
enlightenment, they do not tremble at birth and death. They have set 
out for the benefit of the world, for the ease of the world, out of pity 
for the world. They have resolved: “We will become a shelter for the 
world, a refuge for the world, the world’s place of rest, the final relief 
of the world, islands of the world, lights of the world, leaders of the 
world, the world’s means of salvation.”
Prajnaparamita Sutra
 
The unfolding of the Mahayana marked a decisive phase in the his-
tory of the Buddhist tradition. Against earlier forms of Buddhism the 
Mahayana represented a metaphysical shift from a radical pluralism 
to an absolutism anchored in the doctrine of shunyata; epistemologi-
cally, through Nagarjuna’s Madhyamika, the Mahayana moved from a 
psychologically-oriented empiricism to a mode of dialectical criticism; 
ethically the center of gravity shifted from the arhat ideal of private 
salvation to that of the Bodhisattva, one attuned to the universal deliv-
erance of all beings “down to the last blade of grass.” It has often been 
remarked that the two pre-eminent contributions of the Mahayana to 
the spiritual treasury of Buddhism are the metaphysic of shunyata and 
the Bodhisattva ideal. To these might be added the doctrine of the Tri-
kaya, the Three Bodies of the Buddha who now appears as a cosmic 
and metacosmic figure. 
After some prefatory remarks about the emergence of the Bod-
hisattva ideal this essay explores its significance within the spiritual 
economy of the Mahayana, and its relationship to the pivotal Mahaya-
nist doctrines centering on karuna (compassion), prajna (wisdom), 
and shunyata (voidness). It also takes up some subsidiary questions re-
lating to the Bodhisattva’s “status” viz. the Buddha, the issue of “self-pow-
er” and “other-power,” and the popular appeal of the Bodhisattva ideal.
touchstones of the spirit
68
Although our knowledge of early Buddhism remains somewhat 
sketchy there is some evidence to suggest that by about the second cen-
tury AD the pre-Mahayanist tradition was affected by a kind of dog-
matic constriction and possibly by certain pharisaic currents within 
the sangha. From the (later) Mahayanist perspective there had devel-
oped an exaggerated reliance on the Abhidharma (the systematic ex-
plication of the doctrines) and the Vinaya (the disciplinary rules of the 
monastic community), and an undue emphasis on the ideal of private 
salvation. Dr. Har Dayal has herein located the source of the Bodhisat-
tva ideal:
They the monks became too self-centered and contemplative. . . . The 
Bodhisattva doctrine was promulgated by some Buddhist leaders as 
a protest against this lack of true spiritual fervor and altruism among 
the monks of that period.1
This suggests rather too narrow a view of the impulses behind the 
ideal. Leaving aside various historical exigencies, it can be said that 
the blossoming of the Bodhisattva conception, in one form or another, 
was inevitable. Frithjof Schuon has elaborated the “spiritual logic,” so 
to speak, which made it so:
As far as the Mahayanic ideal of the Bodhisattva is concerned . . . 
account must be taken of the following fundamental situation: Bud-
dhism unfolds itself in a sense between the empirical notions of 
suffering and cessation of suffering; now the notion of compassion 
springs from this very fact, it is an inevitable or necessary link in 
what might be called the spiritual mythology of the Buddhism. To 
say suffering and cessation of suffering is to say compassion, given 
that man is not alone on earth.2
 
We are not here concerned with either the early Theravadin-
Mahayanist disputes generated by the emergence of the Bodhisattva 
ideal except to say that some polemical excesses perhaps answered to 
certain necessities insofar as they were “defensive reflexes” to preserve 
1 H. Dayal, The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature (first published 
1932) (New Delhi: Motilal Barnisidass, 1999), pp. 2-3. 
2 F. Schuon, Treasures of Buddhism (Bangalore: Select Books, 1998), p. 113. See also 
D.T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism: Third Series (London: Rider, 1970), p. 78. 
“the last blade of grass”
69
or affirm the integrity of the spiritual outlook in question. Be that as 
it may, one is still exposed in the scholarly literature to certain over-
simplifications which discolor any overview of the Buddhist tradition. 
Edward Conze, for instance, is guilty of the charge when he makes the 
following, quite astonishing claim
The rationalist orthodoxy of Ceylon has a vision of Buddhism which 
is as truncated and impoverished as the fideism of Shinran, and it 
is no accident that they are both geographically located at the outer 
periphery of the Buddhist world.3
Such asseverations betoken a failure to grasp the principle that 
under the canopy of any great religious tradition there will inevitably 
emerge a variety of spiritual perspectives answering to different needs. 
Nor is it difficult to find many words wasted on the “selfishness” of the 
arhat ideal in the Theravada—another polemical abuse. Nothing need 
be added to Schuon’s salutary remarks that
[I]f there is in the Mahayana an element which calls for some cau-
tion from a metaphysical point of view, it is not the path of the Bo-
dhisattva but, what is quite different, the ideal of the Bodhisattva 
insofar as it is polemically opposed to the “non-altruistic” spiritual-
ity of the pure contemplative, as if, firstly, all true spirituality did not 
necessarily include charity, and secondly, as if the consideration of 
some contingency or other could enter into competition with pure 
and total Knowledge.4
 
Finally, by way of introduction, it should be noted that the Bodhi-
sattva conception is not exclusively Mahayanist. For all Buddhists the 
Buddha himself was a Bodhisattva before his final enlightenment. The 
Theravadin perspective generally restricts itself to this understanding 
of the term although the Sarvastivadins had elaborated a fairly full-
bodied ideal before the time of the Mahayana.5 The decisive contri-
bution of the Mahayana was to “unfold to its furthest limits all that 
3 E. Conze, Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies: Selected Essays (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 
1967), p. 40.
4 F. Schuon, Treasures of Buddhism, p. 125. 
5 See E. Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development (New York: Harper & Row, 
1959), pp. 125-126.
touchstones of the spirit
70
was to be found in the ideal,”6 to give it its richest and most resonant 
expression.
The Bodhisattva Ideal and the Path to its Attainment
There is no shortage of either traditional accounts or scholarly expli-
cations of the Bodhisattva ideal and of the path to be followed by its 
adherents. Let us state the matter briefly. The Bodhisattva is one who 
voluntarily renounces the right to enter nirvana, who, under certain 
inextinguishable vows, undergoes countless rebirths in the samsar-
ic realm in order to devote his/her energies, in a spirit of boundless 
compassion, to the deliverance of all beings down to “the last blade of 
grass.” The Bodhisattva is committed to the practice of the six parami-
tas (perfections), particularly the all-encompassing ideal of prajna 
(wisdom). The Bodhisattva advanced on the path becomes an exem-
plar of sacrificial heroism and moral idealism as well as an aspirant to 
complete enlightenment. 
What of the path? Firstly there is the awakening of the thought 
of enlightenment which matures into a decisive resolve to attain en-
lightenment for the benefitof all beings. After making the Great Re-
solves, entailing many vows, the Bodhisattva (for such he/she now is, 
although still on the early part of the path) perfects the six paramitas 
and progresses through ten bhumis (levels or stages). A crucial trans-
formation takes place at the seventh bhumi by which stage the Bod-
hisattva has fully penetrated the nature of shunyata and has thus per-
fected the paramita of wisdom. The Bodhisattva is now “eligible” for 
entry into nirvana which has been perpetually renounced. However, 
the Bodhisattva now takes on the nature and functions of a celestial 
or transcendent figure and assumes a dharmic body—the monomay-
akaya, a mind-made body of wonder-working powers whereby he/she 
can manifest anywhere, anytime. The Bodhisattva is now beyond the 
terrestrial limitations of time and space, and is free from all karmic 
determinations having entered a realm of pure, effortless, compassion-
ate activity, of spiritual action undefiled by any of the contaminations 
of ignorance (dualistic notions, for instance). The Bodhisattva’s com-
passionate wisdom (or, more strictly, wisdom-in-its-compassionate-
aspect) is now a super-abundance and universal in its applications. 
On completion of the tenth and final bhumi the Bodhisattva becomes 
6 D.T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, p. 79.
“the last blade of grass”
71
Tathagata, fully Perfect Being.7
The importance of the initial vows cannot be over-estimated. They 
take many different forms but are always variations on a theme, as it 
were. Here is one formulation which sounds the keynote of all the 
vows:
I take upon myself . . . the deeds of all beings, even of those in the hells. 
. . . I take their suffering upon me. . . . I bear it, I do not draw back 
from it, I do not tremble at it, I do not lose heart. . . . I must bear the 
burden of all beings, for I have vowed to save all things living, to bring 
them safe through the forest of birth, age, disease, death, and rebirth. 
I think not of my own salvation, but strive to bestow on all beings the 
royalty of supreme wisdom. So I take upon myself all the sorrows of 
all beings. . . . Truly I will not abandon them. For I have resolved to 
gain supreme wisdom for the sake of all that lives, to save the world.8
The similarity to the sacrificial ideal incarnated in Christ is strik-
ing. We can also discern a parallel with Christian doctrine in the idea 
of the transference of suffering and of merit. This was a radical doctri-
nal innovation and was integral to the Mahayanist conception of both 
the Buddha and the Bodhisattva. Nevertheless, one must be wary of at-
tempts to explain the Bodhisattva ideal in terms of “borrowings” from 
Christianity. The differences are no less striking. We note, for instance, 
the emphasis in the Buddhist vow on the attainment of wisdom which 
assumes a secondary place in the Christian perspective, addressed as it 
is primarily to man’s affective and volitional nature. 
The vows set before the Bodhisattva the goal for all time, and di-
rect all spiritual development. Furthermore, and this point is funda-
mental in the Mahayana,
7 This adumbrated version of the ideal and the path is derived from several sources; 
it is an unexceptional account which follows the traditional sources. For a detailed 
discussion of the significance of the Tathagata, not canvassed in this article, see T.R.V. 
Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism: A Study of Madhyamika System (London: 
Allen & Unwin, 1980). For a detailed account of the ten bhumis see N. Dutt, Mahayana 
Buddhism (Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1976), Chapters 4 & 5.
8 Taken from A.L. Basham, The Wonder that was India: A Survey of the Indian Sub-
Continent Before the Coming of the Muslims (London: Collins Fontana, 1967), pp. 277-
278. For an extended version of the Bodhisattva’s vows see Santideva, A Guide to the 
Bodhisattva Way of Life (Bodhisattvacharya-vatara), trans. S. Batchelor (Dharamsala: 
Library of Tibetan Works & Archives, 1979), pp. 29-34. 
touchstones of the spirit
72
Man becomes what he wills. . . . Spiritual realization is a growth from 
within, self-creative and self-determining. It is not too much to say 
that the nature of the resolve determines the nature of the final at-
tainment.9
Lama Anagarika Govinda articulates the same principle when he 
writes
If . . . we take the view that consciousness is not a product of the 
world but that the world is a product of consciousness . . . it becomes 
obvious that we live in exactly the type of world we have created . . . 
and that the remedy cannot be an “escape” from the world but only a 
change of “mind.” Such a change, however, can only take place if we 
know the innermost nature of this mind and its power.10
It is, of course, a change of “mind,” a transformation of consciousness, 
that the Bodhisattva envisages in the original vows. The vows are re-
affirmed during the ninth bhumi by which time they are no longer 
statements of intent but pure spiritual acts with incalculable effects.11
The six paramitas to be actualized in the Bodhisattva are charity 
(dana), morality (sila), forbearance (kshanti), vigor (virya), concen-
tration (samadhi), and wisdom (prajna). In some schools these six 
paramitas are linked with the first six bhumis, the correspondence first 
being postulated by Chandrakirti in the Madhyamakavatara.12 Howev-
er, the practice of the six paramitas is simultaneous, all of them being 
informed by the all-embracing ideals of karuna and prajna. Indeed, 
the first five paramitas cannot be separated from prajna of which they 
are secondary aspects, each destined to contribute in their own way to 
the attainment of liberating knowledge.
9 T.R.V. Murti, Central Philosophy of Buddhism, pp. 266-267.
10 A. Govinda, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism: According to the Esoteric Teachings 
of the Great Mantra, Om Mani Padme Hum (London: Rider, 1969), p. 274. This passage 
might suggest the Yogacarin view of “mind-only” but as Lama Govinda makes clear in 
the same work, this is not the intention of the passage above. For a similar statement 
but one protected by the appropriate qualifications see A. Govinda, The Way of the 
White Clouds: A Buddhist Pilgrim in Tibet (London: Rider, 1974), p. 123.
11 See E. Conze, Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies, pp. 42-43.
12 See T.R.V. Murti, Central Philosophy of Buddhism, p. 269.
“the last blade of grass”
73
During the early bhumis the Bodhisattva’s energies must be dedi-
cated in the first place to the realization of shunyata without which the 
perfection of prajna is not possible. Recall the incident in the Life of 
Milarepa when the sage is asked by his disciples whether they should 
engage in an active life of good deeds. His reply:
If there is not attachment to selfish aims, you can. But that is difficult. 
Those who are full of worldly desires can do nothing to help others. 
They do not even profit themselves. It is as if a man, carried away by 
a torrent, pretended to save others. Nobody can do anything for sen-
tient beings without first attaining transcendent insight into Reality. 
Like the blind leading the blind, one would risk being carried away 
by desires. Because space is limitless and sentient beings innumer-
able, you will always have a chance to help others when you become 
capable of doing so. Until then, cultivate the aspiration toward Com-
plete Enlightenment by loving others more than yourselves while 
practicing the Dharma.13
 
In considering the later stages of the Bodhisattva’s spiritual tra-
jectory we enter realms where any verbal articulation of the realities 
in question is problematic. Any formulation must be in the nature of 
a suggestive metaphor, a signpost. Much of the Mahayanist literature 
concerning this subject, especially in the Himalayan regions, resorts 
to a densely symbolic mythology and its accompanying iconography.14
The attainment of insight into shunyata makes possible the com-
passionate mission of the Bodhisattva, unhinderedby dualistic mis-
conceptions. Once in the seventh bhumi, with the assumption of the 
monomayakaya, the Bodhisattva can appear in manifold guises, each 
one appropriate to the spiritual necessities of the case. Thus the Bo-
dhisattva can appear in forms fierce and gruesome as well as benign 
and attractive—as we see in the resplendent and sometimes startling 
iconography of the Vajrayana. Before reaching the seventh level the 
Bodhisattva remains in the phenomenal realm and his compassionate 
acts partake of “strain and strenuosity,” but now the Bodhisattva leaves 
behind all terrestrial and karmic constraints and enters the realm of 
13 L. Lhalungpa (trans.), The Life of Milarepa (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1977), p.171.
14 For an illuminating discussion of the often-misunderstood nature, in a traditional 
context, of both “symbol” and “myth,” see essays on these subjects in K. Raine, Defend-
ing Ancient Springs (Cambridge: Golgonooza, 1985). 
touchstones of the spirit
74
spontaneous, effortless, and pure spiritual action. The Dasha-bhumika 
explains the transition to effortlessness thus:
It is like a man in a dream who finds himself drowning in a river; he 
musters all his courage and is determined at all costs to get out of it. 
And because of these efforts and desperate contrivances he is awak-
ened from the dream and when thus awakened he at once perceives 
that no further doings are needed now. So with the Bodhisattva. . . .15
This does not mean that the Bodhisattva settles into quietistic 
inertia but rather that his/her being has been transformed into com-
passionate wisdom radiating through the universe. It might be com-
pared to the Christian conception of God’s love which is universal, 
non-discriminating, indifferent, making the sun to rise on the evil as 
well as the good, and sending rain on both the just and the unjust.16 
Murti speaks of the Bodhisattva being “actuated by motiveless altru-
ism . . . his freedom is full and complete by itself; but he condescends 
to raise others to his level. This is a free phenomenalizing act of grace 
and compassion.”17
If we return to Schuon’s claim that the Bodhisattva ideal is implicit 
in the Buddhist vision which turns on the two poles of suffering and 
deliverance, we can now see more clearly what is meant by this claim. 
Schuon elaborates the claim in writing that the Bodhisattva
incarnates the element of compassion—the ontological link as it 
were between pain and Felicity—just as the Buddha incarnates Felic-
ity and just as ordinary beings incarnate suffering: he must be pres-
ent in the cosmos as long as there is both a samsara and a Nirvana, 
this presence being expressed by the statement that the Bodhisattva 
wishes to save “all beings.”18
The Bodhisattva Ideal and the Metaphysic of Shunyata
The Bodhisattva enterprise is oriented towards enlightenment, as the 
etymology of the term itself makes clear:
15 Quoted in D.T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, p. 225. See also H. Shurmann, Bud-
dhism: An Outline of Its Teaching and Schools (London: Rider, 1973), pp. 112-113.
16 Matthew 5:45.
17 T.R.V. Murti, Central Philosophy of Buddhism, p. 263.
18 F. Schuon, Treasures of Buddhism, p. 113. 
“the last blade of grass”
75
Prajna informs and inspires the entire spiritual discipline; every 
virtue and each act of concentration is dedicated to the gaining 
of insight into the real. The stress has shifted viz. earlier Buddhist 
practices from the moral to the metaphysical axis . . . all the other 
paramitas are meant to purify the mind and make it fit to receive the 
intuition of the absolute. It is prajna that can make of each of them a 
paramita—a perfection.19
We have already noted, in the cautions of Milarepa, the emphasis on 
prajna. Without the guidance of insight, would-be compassion is often 
no more than sentiment, all too easily conscripted by what Chögyam 
Trungpa has called “the bureaucracy of the ego” and turned, unwit-
tingly, to destructive and futile ends.
In the Mahayanist perspective karuna (compassion) is inseparable 
from prajna—insight into shunyata which, for the moment, we can 
translate in conventional fashion as “emptiness” or “voidness.” The re-
lationship is stated by Milarepa in this characteristic formulation:
If ye realize Voidness, Compassion will arise within your hearts;
If ye lose all differentiation between yourself and others,
fit to serve others ye will be. . . .20
Karuna arises out of prajna. Compassion, at least in its full ampli-
tude, cannot precede prajna; it is a function of prajna. On this point 
the Mahayanists are unyielding. As Herbert Guenther has pointed out, 
karuna means not only compassion but also action.21 This anticipates 
the point at issue here: karuna is the action attending an awareness 
of shunyata. However, even this formulation implies a dualism not to 
be found in the reality itself. Compassion, it might be said, is the dy-
namic aspect of knowledge or awareness and as such, is a criterion of 
its authenticity. To recast this in moral terms more characteristic of 
the Occidental religious traditions we can say that virtue is integral to 
wisdom. As Schuon has remarked, “a wisdom without virtue is in fact 
19 T.R.V. Murti, Central Philosophy of Buddhism, p. 267.
20 This translation is from W. Evans-Wentz (ed.), Tibet’s Great Yogi Milarepa: A Biog-
raphy from the Tibetan, trans. Kazi Dawa-Samdup (London: Oxford University Press, 
1951), p. 273.
21 H.V. Guenther & C. Trungpa, The Dawn of Tantra (Berkeley: Shambhala, 1975), p. 
31.
touchstones of the spirit
76
imposture and hypocrisy.”22 At this juncture an interesting comparison 
with Christianity arises. Buddhism insists that karuna without pra-
jna is a contradiction in terms, a chimera, the blind leading the blind. 
Christianity, with its more bhaktic orientation, alerts us, in the first 
place, to the illusoriness of a wisdom bereft of caritas—a “sounding 
brass” or a “tinkling cymbal.”23 Ultimately, of course, the principle at 
stake is the same, but the different accents are illuminating.
In the Mahayana karuna and prajna come to be seen not only as 
inseparable but as identical: reference to one or the other signifies the 
same reality when viewed from a particular angle. The fully-fledged 
Bodhisattva is simultaneously fully enlightened and boundlessly com-
passionate. The compassionate aspect of the Bodhisattvas is stressed 
not because they are in any sense deficient in wisdom but because their 
cosmic function is to highlight and to radiate this dimension of wis-
dom-awareness. Ultimately karuna is identified not only with prajna 
but with shunyata itself. This is so because the duality of knower and 
known must be transcended. Further, because the universe itself is of 
the nature of shunyata, karuna also comes to be identified with the 
universe itself. Heinrich Zimmer put it this way:
Within the hearts of all creatures compassion is present as the sign 
of their potential Bodhisattvahood; for all things are shunyata, the 
void—and the pure reflex of the void . . . is compassion. Compas-
sion, indeed, is the force that holds things in manifestation—just 
as it withholds the Bodhisattva from nirvana. The whole universe, 
therefore, is karuna, compassion, which is also known as shunyata, 
the void.24
The same principle is approached from a different angle in this 
formulation:
[T]he sapiential Mahayana intends to maintain its solidarity with the 
heroic ideal of the Bodhisattva, but by bringing it back to a strictly 
metaphysical perspective: it specifies that compassion is a dimension 
22 F. Schuon, Roots of the Human Condition (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom Books, 
1991), p. 86.
23 1 Corinthians 12:1.
24 H. Zimmer, Philosophies of India, ed. J. Campbell (London: Routledge & Kegan 
Paul, 1951), p. 553.
“the last blade of grass”
77
of Knowledge, then it adds that the neighbor is non-real . . . there is 
no one whom our charity could concern, nor is there a charity which 
could be “ours.”25Now this, to say the least, is somewhat perplexing to the ratioci-
native mind. There is no gainsaying the fact that, at least on the level 
of mundane experience and “common sense,” we are here faced with 
several conundrums. What is the meaning of the Bodhisattva’s mis-
sion in the face of shunyata? If all is “emptiness” is this much ado about 
nothing? Is the Bodhisattva’s enterprise somewhat akin to the monkey 
trying to take hold of the moon in the water? What are we to make of 
such characteristic claims as “Where an attitude in which shunyata and 
karuna are indivisible is developed, there is the message of the Buddha, 
the Dharma, and the Sangha?”26 And then too, we must ask, in what 
sense should we understand the Bodhisattva’s refusal to enter nirvana 
until all beings are saved? How be it that an enlightened being is not 
thereby “in” nirvana? And what of the well-known formulation that 
“Samsara is nirvana,” and vice versa, or, similarly, that “Form is void, 
Void is form?” 
Such questions can only adequately be answered through an un-
derstanding of the term upaya, usually translated as “skilful means” 
but perhaps more adequately rendered as “provisional means which 
have a spiritually therapeutic effect” or, to use Schuon’s more poetic 
term, “saving mirages.” Buddhism is directed in the first place to our 
most urgent spiritual needs, the soteriological purpose everywhere in-
forming and shaping the means of which the tradition avails itself. In 
other words, Buddhism, like all religious traditions, resorts to certain 
mythological and doctrinal “accommodations” which
while objectively inadequate, are nonetheless logically appropriate 
for the religious axiom they serve and are justified by their effective-
ness pro domo as well as by their indirect and symbolic truth.27
25 F. Schuon, Treasures of Buddhism, p. 110. 
26 Quoted in H.V. Guenther & C. Trungpa, The Dawn of Tantra, p. 32.
27 F. Schuon, Form and Substance in the Religions (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 
2002), p. 4. See also F. Schuon, Understanding Islam (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom 
Books, 1998), pp. 174ff.
touchstones of the spirit
78
Of course, Buddhism is not peculiar in dealing with “partial truths” 
in respect of its formal elements but the Madhyamika-based traditions 
have been conspicuously alert to the dangers of identifying Truth or 
Reality with any dogmatic or conceptual forms which can never be 
more than markers guiding the aspirant. Nagarjuna’s whole dialec-
tic (nearly two millennia before our own much vaunted post-mod-
ernists!) is directed towards demonstrating the inadequacy and self-
contradiction of all mental and conceptual formulations. Indeed, the 
Mahayanists speak of Reality itself only in apparently negative terms 
reminiscent of the Upanisadic neti neti. Nevertheless, certain truths 
can be brought within the purview of the average mentality through 
“therapeutic errors.” It is therefore important to make the necessary 
discriminations in considering myths and doctrines which might be 
situated on different levels and which may answer to varying spiritual 
needs and temperaments.
Clearly any adequate understanding of the Bodhisattva ideal rests 
on an understanding of shunyata. Unhappily the conventional Eng-
lish translations— “emptiness,” “voidness”—often carry negative im-
plications and associations which can only blur our understanding of 
shunyata. We cannot here recapitulate the Nagarjunian dialectic nor 
explore the ramifications of the doctrine of shunyata. However, it is 
useful to note Guenther’s remark that “openness” is at least as helpful a 
pointer as “emptiness.” In similar vein, Lama Govinda stresses that an 
understanding of shunyata heightens our awareness of the “transpar-
ency” of phenomena. Shunyata, he writes,
is not a negative property but a state of freedom from impediments 
and limitations, a state of spontaneous receptivity. . . . [S]hunyata is 
the emptiness of all conceptual designations and at the same time 
the recognition of a higher, incommensurable, and indefinable real-
ity which can only be experienced in the state of perfect enlighten-
ment.28
The penetration of shunyata allows the Bodhisattva to experi-
ence the phenomenal realm as it actually is and not under the illusory 
aspects it assumes when experienced in a state of ignorance. Under-
standing shunyata, the Bodhisattva does not repudiate the world of 
28 A. Govinda, Creative Meditation and Multi-Dimensional Consciousness (Wheaton, 
IL: Quest Books, 1976), p. 11. On the “transparency” of shunyata see also p. 51.
“the last blade of grass”
79
suffering beings as an utter non-reality; to do so would be to succumb 
to what the Mahayanists call uccheddadarsanam—i.e., a kind of nihil-
ism. As D.T. Suzuki has pointed out,
That the world is like a mirage, that it is thus empty, does not mean 
that it is unreal in the sense that it has no reality whatsoever. But it 
means that its real nature cannot be understood by a mind that can-
not rise above the dualism of “to be” (sat) and “not to be” (asat).29
The Bodhisattva’s karuna issues from the overcoming of this dual-
ism. As one translation of the Lankavatara Sutra has it,
The world transcends (the dualism of) birth and death, it is like the 
flower in the air; the wise are free from (the ideas of being and non-
being); yet a great compassionate heart is awakened in them.30
The mission of the Bodhisattva, far from being “invalidated” by shun-
yata, actually derives from it. T.R.V. Murti has explicated this in com-
manding fashion, especially in the light of the shunyata-prajna-karu-
na-universe equation already discussed:
Shunyata is prajna, intellectual intuition, and is identical with the 
Absolute. Karuna is the active principle of compassion that gives 
concrete expression to shunyata in phenomena. If the first is Tran-
scendent and looks to the Absolute, the second is fully immanent 
and looks down towards phenomena. The first is the . . . universal 
reality of which no determinations can be predicated; it is beyond 
the duality of good and evil, love and hatred, virtue and vice; the sec-
ond is goodness, love and pure act. . . . [T]he Bodhisattva . . . is thus 
an amphibious being with one foot in the Absolute and the other in 
phenomena.31 
Prajna perceives the emptiness, openness, and indivisibility of the 
Absolute while karuna sees the diversity of the phenomenal realm. But 
these aspects of awareness are inseparable: the Bodhisattva is the living 
embodiment, the “personification” of this truth.
29 D.T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, p. 215.
30 Sung translation, quoted by D.T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, p. 215.
31 T.R.V. Murti, Central Philosophy of Buddhism, p. 264.
touchstones of the spirit
80
The Bodhisattva appreciates the lack of any self-existent reality in 
the phenomenal world and understands the impermanent and fugitive 
nature of all things within the world of time and space. Simultaneously 
the Bodhisattva takes account of the relative reality of manifested be-
ings and thus sets out to eradicate evil on the samsaric plane and to 
help deliver all beings from the Round of Existence. In other words, 
the Bodhisattva experiences whatever measure of reality belongs to the 
phenomenal world while being immune to dualistic misconceptions 
and their karmic effects. “The Bodhisattva weeps with suffering be-
ings and at the same time realizes that there is one who never weeps, 
being above sufferings, tribulations, and contaminations.”32 Because of 
his identification with all beings the Bodhisattva suffers; because of his 
wisdom he experiences the blissful awareness of the full plenitude of 
the Void.33
What of the Bodhisattva’s “location” in Samsara/nirvana? In the 
Mahayanist literature we can find different formulations of the Bod-
hisattva’s “whereabouts”: he remains in Samsara; he is “on the brink” 
of nirvana; he is in nirvana because nirvana is Samsara. Here we are 
in a realm not amenableto factual exactitude and will only succeed in 
tightening the “mental knots” if we approach these expressions in the 
either/or mode of rationalist, analytical, and empiricist philosophy; 
rather, we need to understand the truths enshrined in these different 
formulations.
The first expression, as well as signaling various truths which we 
have already discussed, suggests that enlightenment is possible within 
the samsaric realm:
The condition of the gnostic Bodhisattva would be neither conceiv-
able nor tolerable if it were not a matter of contemplating the Abso-
lute at once in the heart and in the world. . . .34
The second symbolizes the truth that time and eternity, phenom-
ena and the Void, do not exist as independent opposites but are aspects 
32 D.T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, pp. 229 & 216.
33 See M. Pallis, The Way and the Mountain (London: Peter Owen, 1960), p. 182. See 
also Pallis’ remarks in a footnote on the parallels with the doctrine of the Two Natures 
of Christ.
34 F. Schuon, Treasures of Buddhism, p.119.
“the last blade of grass”
81
of the one reality, all of the nature of shunyata. The Bodhisattva is a link 
or axis that joins the apparently separate realms of the phenomenal, 
the celestial, and the metacosmic. (In this context the Bodhisattva con-
ception is closely related to the doctrine of the Trikaya.) Thirdly, from 
the enlightened “point of view” the opposition between Samsara and 
nirvana is seen to be illusory, all dualities having been transcended in 
the light of the supreme unitive knowledge. Thus there can be no ques-
tion of the Bodhisattva being either “here” or “there.”
When the Prajnaparamita Sutra and other scriptures tell us that 
“Form is void and Void is form” this must be understood in the sense 
of what is before we project our conceptualizations and designations 
onto it. The formulation cannot be fully understood independently of 
the intuition of shunyata. Once the liberative knowledge has been at-
tained then, and then only, will the duality of Samsara and nirvana dis-
appear. Thus the Lankavatara Sutra speaks in one and the same breath 
of the Bodhisattva both being and not being “in” nirvana:
The Bodhisattvas, O Mahatmi, who rejoice in the bliss of the sama-
dhi of cessation are well furnished with the original vows and the 
pitying heart, and realizing the import of the inextinguishable vows, 
do not enter nirvana. They are already in nirvana because their views 
are not at all beclouded by discrimination.35
Many of these considerations are synthesized in a magisterial pas-
sage by Frithjof Schuon: 
If the Bodhisattva is supposed to “refuse entry into Nirvana so long 
as a single blade of grass remains undelivered,” this means two 
things: firstly—and this is the cosmic viewpoint—that the function 
of the Bodhisattva coincides with what in Western language may be 
termed the permanent “angelic presence” in the world, a presence 
which disappears only with the world itself at the final reintegration, 
the “Apocatastasis”; secondly—and this is the metaphysical view-
point—it means that the Bodhisattva, realizing the “emptiness” of 
things, thereby also realizes the “emptiness” of the samsara as such 
and at the same time its nirvanic quality . . . expressed in the sentence 
“Form is void and Void is form.” The samsara, which seems at first 
35 The Lankavatara Sutra: A Mahayana Text, trans. D.T. Suzuki (London: Routledge 
& Kegan Paul, 1973), p. 184.
touchstones of the spirit
82
to be inexhaustible, so that the Bodhisattva’s vow appears to have 
something excessive or even demented about it, becomes “instantly” 
reduced—in the non-temporal instaneity of prajna—to “universal 
Enlightenment” (Sambodhi); on this plane, every antinomy is tran-
scended and as it were consumed. “Delivering the last blade of grass” 
amounts, in this sense, to seeing it in its nirvanic essence or to seeing 
the unreality of its non-deliverance.36
The Bodhisattva and the Buddha(s)
In keeping with its cosmic perspective, the Mahayana, unlike the 
Theravadin tradition, sees the Buddha as the embodiment of a spiri-
tual principle, one who “acted out” his life for the benefit of all sentient 
beings still lost in the “forest of birth, disease, old age, death, and re-
birth,” his own enlightenment, in the words of the Saddharmapundar-
ika Sutra, having been attained “inconceivable thousands of millions 
of world ages” ago.37
The Theravadins had recognized three ultimate spiritual possibili-
ties: Self-Buddhas (Paccekabuddha), the perfected saint (arhat), and 
the Complete Perfect Buddha (Sammasambuddha). The arhat ideal 
occupied the pivotal position, it being the possibility open to the or-
dinary human being who was prepared to tread the path mapped by 
Shakyamuni. This ideal rested on an austere monastic asceticism. The 
Mahayana, on the other hand, established the Perfect Buddha as an 
ideal whose realization was open to all and equated it with the aspi-
rations of the Bodhisattva. It also elaborated a conception of a host 
of transcendent Buddhas and celestial Buddha-Lands—Pure Lands or 
Paradises, of which Amitabha’s Western Paradise has been, historically, 
the most important. The celestial Buddhas and Paradises, as well as the 
Bodhisattvic figures such as Avalokiteshvara, Manjushri, Vajrapani, 
and Tara, have played a particularly important part in the iconography 
of the Tibeto-Himalayan branches of the Mahayana.
The most significant Mahayanist distinction between the Buddha 
and the Bodhisattva is not determined by “degrees” of enlightenment 
but by function. That of the Bodhisattva is a dynamic and salvatory one 
implying a perpetual “descent” into Samsara (thus recalling the Hindu 
36 F. Schuon, Treasures of Buddhism, p. 139. 
37 Saddharmapundarika Sutra (“Lotus of the Good Law” Sutra), cited in H. Shur-
mann, Buddhism: An Outline of Its Teaching and Schools, p. 99.
“the last blade of grass”
83
conception of the avatar). From one point of view it might be said that 
“the Buddha represents the contemplative aspect and the Bodhisattva 
the dynamic aspect of nirvana,” or that “the former is turned towards 
the Absolute and the latter towards contingency.”38 As the Bodhisattva 
and the Buddha are of the same nature there is no rigid distinction be-
tween them but a subtle relationship which appears in changing guises 
under different lights. It is said in the Lankavatara Sutra, for instance, 
that the Bodhisattvas are incapable of reaching their final goal with-
out the “other-power” (adhishthana) of the Buddha, without his all-
pervading power.39 However, it is also sometimes said in the Mahaya-
nist texts that it is by virtue of the compassion of the Bodhisattva that 
the Buddhas come into the world. In the Saddharmapundarika Sutra, 
for instance, we find this: “From the Buddhas arises only the disciples 
and the Pratyekabuddhas but from the Bodhisattva the perfect Buddha 
himself is born.”40
Self-Power, Other-Power, and the Bodhisattva
The question of self-power and other-power has fuelled a good deal 
of reckless polemic within nearly all of the major religious traditions. 
Buddhism is no exception. Edward Conze has remarked that the in-
effable reality of salvation can be viewed from three distinct vantage 
points: (a) as the product of self-striving under the guidance of an in-
fallible teacher, (b) as the work of an external and personified agent ac-
cepted in faith, and (c) as the doing of the Absolute itself. From a meta-
physical point of view doubtless the third represents the least restricted 
outlook. However, the relative merits of these perspectives are not at 
issue here; rather we must consider this question in the context of our 
primary concern, the Mahayanist understanding of the Bodhisattva.
The Theravadins, by and large hold to the first of these views. Take 
this from an eminent contemporary Theravadin:
[M]an has the power to liberate himself from all bondage through 
his own personal effort and intelligence.. . . If the Buddha is to be 
38 F. Schuon, Treasures of Buddhism, p. 133.
39 See D.T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, pp. 202-205.
40 See Tattvasamgraha, in H. Zimmer, Philosophies of India, p. 552. For discussion of 
some recent scholarly debate about the relationship of the Bodhisattvas and Buddhas 
see P. Williams, Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations (London: Routledge, 
1989), pp. 204-214.
touchstones of the spirit
84
called a “savior” at all, it is only in the sense that he discovered and 
showed the path to Liberation, Nirvana. But we must tread the path 
ourselves. . . . [A]ccording to the Buddha, man’s emancipation de-
pends on his own realization of the Truth, and not on the benevolent 
grace of a god or any external power. . . .41
 
In the Mahayana we find a less monolithic attitude. The Zen 
schools, in the main, also emphasize self-power (jiriki) rather than oth-
er-power (tariki) while the Jodo and Shin branches of Buddhism place 
overwhelming importance on both faith and grace.42 Taken overall the 
Mahayana encompasses all the points of view posited above. The pre-
cise way in which the saving power of the Buddha(s) and Bodhisattvas 
is envisaged varies according to the prevailing spiritual climate and 
the proclivities of the peoples in question. However, the Bodhisattva 
conception can provide a meeting-place for the truths which underlie 
the different attitudes under discussion. Lama Govinda, by way of ex-
ample, pays due respect to both the “other-power” of the Bodhisattva 
and the “self-power” of the aspirant which, so to speak, “collaborate:”
The help of a Bodhisattva is not something that comes from outside 
or is pressed upon those who are helped, but is the awakening of a 
force which dwells in the innermost nature of every being, a force 
which, awakened by the spiritual influence or example of a Bodhisat-
tva, enables us to meet fearlessly every situation. . . .43 
 
Before leaving this question we might profitably remind ourselves 
of a general point made by Frithjof Schuon: 
All great spiritual experiences agree in this: there is no common 
measure between the means put into operation and the result. “With 
men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible,” says the 
Gospel. In fact, what separates man from divine Reality is the slight-
est of barriers: God is infinitely close to man, but man is infinitely far 
from God. This barrier, for man, is a mountain: man stands in front 
41 W. Rahula, What the Buddha Taught (London: Gordon Fraser, 1978), pp. 1-2.
42 For a salutary corrective to overheated polemics on this subject see M. Pallis, A 
Buddhist Spectrum: Contributions to Buddhist-Christian Dialogue (London: Allen & 
Unwin, 1980), pp. 52-71.
43 A. Govinda, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, p. 233.
“the last blade of grass”
85
of a mountain which he must remove with his own hands. He digs 
away the earth, but in vain, the mountain remains; man however 
goes on digging, in the name of God. And the mountain vanishes. It 
was never there.44
Despite its theistic vocabulary this has a certain Buddhist resonance 
and recalls the man drowning in the river. The multivalent spirituality 
of the Mahayana certainly takes full account of the spiritual possibili-
ties latent in the principle.
No doubt Buddhism as a whole is founded upon “self-power” but 
since “other-power” is a spiritually efficacious possibility it was bound 
to appear somewhere within the orbit of the tradition. In the Tibeto-
Himalayan area, where the Bodhisattva ideal is pre-eminent, we find a 
happy and judicious blend of the two elements. In the everyday life of 
the common people there was unquestionably a great deal of emphasis 
on the miraculous effects flowing from a faithful devotion to the Bud-
dha and the Bodhisattvas. As Conze has observed, the Madhyamika 
dialectic and the doctrine of shunyata has exercised a potent appeal for 
Buddhists of a “jnanic” disposition. However, the popular appeal of the 
Mahayana is, in good measure, to be explained by the “spiritual mag-
netism” of the Bodhisattva ideal which could “stir the hearts of all” and 
provide “the basis for immediate action.”45 Furthermore, the Bodhisat-
tva ideal helped introduce into Buddhism a more explicitly religious 
element, particularly through bhaktic practices, as well as a cosmic 
perspective without which Buddhism might easily have degenerated 
into what Murti calls “an exalted moral naturalism.”46 In the popular 
teachings much is made of the unlimited merits and “boundless trea-
sury of virtues” (gunasambhava) of the Bodhisattvas. It is worth noting 
that the three principal virtues—Merit, Compassion, Wisdom—cor-
respond analogically with the paths of karma-yoga, bhakti-yoga, and 
jnana-yoga in the Hindu tradition.47 The Bodhisattva ideal also pro-
vided fertile ground for the flowering of Buddhist mythology and ico-
44 F. Schuon, Stations of Wisdom (London: John Murray, 1961), p. 157.
45 E. Conze, Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies, p. 54.
46 T.R.V. Murti, Central Philosophy of Buddhism, p. 263. On the place of the Bodhisat-
tvas in devotional practices see P. Williams, Mahayana Buddhism, pp. 215-276.
47 F. Schuon, Treasures of Buddhism, p. 117. See also H. Zimmer, Philosophies of India, 
p. 535.
touchstones of the spirit
86
nography, particularly in the Vajrayana and in the Far East where the 
cult of Kuan-Yin remains pervasive to this day.48
Conclusion
The Bodhisattva ideal has been of incalculable importance in the Ma-
hayana, although it has not everywhere received the same emphasis. It 
gathered together in a vivid, living ideal the principles of prajna and 
karuna and tied them firmly to the metaphysic of shunyata. The con-
ception found its most luxuriant expression in the Vajrayana where it 
played an integrative role for many different aspects of Buddhist teach-
ing and practice. On the popular level the Bodhisattva provided an ex-
emplar of the spiritual life and a devotional focus. Cosmologically, the 
Bodhisattva was an axial figure running through terrestrial, celestial, 
and transcendental realms. Metaphysically considered the Bodhisattva 
conception, rooted in the doctrine of shunyata, provided a resolution 
of dualistic conceptions of Samsara and nirvana and provided a bridge 
between the Absolute and the relative. In its reconciliation of all these 
elements in the Bodhisattva Mahayana Buddhism finds one of its most 
characteristic and elevated expressions. Let us leave the final word with 
Saraha, reputedly the teacher of the Mahayana’s greatest metaphysi-
cian, Nagarjuna:
He who clings to the Void
And neglects Compassion
Does not reach the highest stage.
But he who practices only Compassion
Does not gain release from the toils of existence.
He, however, who is strong in the practice of both,
Remains neither in Samsara nor in Nirvana.49
48 See J. Blofeld, Bodhisattva of Compassion: The Mystical Tradition of Kuan Yin (Bos-
ton: Shambhala, 1977). 
49 From Saraha, Treasury of Songs, quoted in W. Perry (ed.), A Treasury of Traditional 
Wisdom (London: Allen & Unwin, 1971), p. 607
87
chapter 5
“Grass Upon the Hills”:
Traditional and Modern Attitudes to Biography
Put on the mantle of nothingness,
and drink of the cup of annihilation,
then cover your breast with the belt of belittlement
and put on your head the cloak of non-existence.
 Attar1
In a traditional civilization, it is almost inconceivable that a man 
should lay claim to the possession of an idea.
René Guénon2
All that is true, by whomsoever spoken, is from the Holy Ghost.
St. Ambrose3
In Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus we are told that the sage resisted all at-
tempts to unravel his personal history:
[H]e could never be induced to tell of his ancestry, his parentage, or 
his birthplace. He showed too, an unconquerable reluctance to sit to 
a painter or a sculptor, and when Amelius persisted in urging him 
to allow of a portrait being made he asked him, “Is it not enough to 
carry aboutthis image in which nature has enclosed us? Do you re-
ally think I must consent to leave, as a desirable spectacle to poster-
ity, an image of the image?”4
1 Farid Ud-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds, ed. & trans. C.S. Nott (Boulder: 
Shambhala, 1971), pp. 124-125. I have substituted the words “mantle” and “cloak” for 
Nott’s “khirk” and “burnous.”
2 R. Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World (London: Luzac, 1975), pp. 52-53.
3 St. Ambrose quoted in Letter to The New English Weekly, January 1946, in A.K. Coo-
maraswamy, Selected Letters of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, ed. R.P. Coomaraswamy & 
A. Moore Jr. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 108.
4 Porphyry’s “On the Life of Plotinus” in Plotinus, The Enneads, trans. S. MacKenna 
(London: Faber, 1960), p. 1. 
touchstones of the spirit
88
The episode is instructive. We see in this anecdote not only an 
attitude everywhere to be found amongst the wise and the pious but 
also, at least implicitly, the principle which informs it: the outer per-
son, the egoic self with all its attendant contingencies, is of no lasting 
significance; it is only the Inner Self which matters and which is not a 
mere “image.” An aversion to any preoccupation with purely personal 
and temporal considerations is, of course, a characteristic mark of the 
mystic. It is sometimes thought that a predilection for anonymity and 
self-effacement is “Eastern” or “oriental.” The simple fact is that such an 
attitude is common amongst those of high spiritual attainment wher-
ever they be found. But
to an age which believes in personality and personalism, the imper-
sonality of the mystics is baffling; and to an age which is trying to 
quicken its insight into history the indifference of mystics to events 
in time is disconcerting.5 
Between the spiritual posture exemplified by Plotinus and the mod-
ern European mania for biographical anecdotage lies a veritable abyss. 
This is not the place for a detailed inquiry into the development of that 
voracious appetite for all manner of biographical literature. However, 
a few general remarks will serve as a backdrop against which to sketch 
out the traditional attitude. 
One of the most potent factors affecting the history of the modern 
world has been a humanistic individualism, the seeds of which were 
germinated in the Renaissance. The erosion of traditional Christian 
values by the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, the so-called En-
lightenment, and the materialist ideologies of the nineteenth century 
has been matched by a corresponding growth of a secularist worldview 
which has helped to promote what can properly be called a pseudo-
cult of individualism. Several other developments have also stimulated 
an interest in mundane biography. Historicism in its various guises 
(Marxism, for instance) has sharpened our awareness of “events in 
time” and emphasized the influence of our social environment. More 
recently psychologism—so called because its practitioners are more 
often than not dealing in a kind of ideology—has focused attention on 
the apparently unique experience of each individual person. 
5 A reviewer in The Harvard Divinity School Bulletin XXXIX, 1942, p. 107. 
“grass upon the hills”
89
European thought since the Renaissance has also been increas-
ingly dominated by a despotic scientism, one bereft of any metaphysi-
cal basis and operating outside the framework of religious tradition. 
The impact of this scientism, conspiring with the ideologies of indus-
trial capitalism, has done nothing to check the rise of secular human-
ism and individualism—quite the contrary. The implications of these 
changes in the European ethos have been profound and far-reaching. 
They have everything to do with the modern fascination with biogra-
phy.
Part and parcel of this intellectual and cultural change is the tri-
umph of empiricism and of a wholesale philosophical relativism. All 
phenomena are reduced to a level where they can be investigated em-
pirically and are situated on the plane of the “natural” or the “cultural.” 
This trend is writ large over the pages of Europe’s recent history, evi-
denced by such characteristically modern systems of thought as philo-
sophical rationalism, positivism, dialectical materialism, existential-
ism, and the like. We can see a somewhat paradoxical expression of it 
in Enlightenment theories of “natural religion.” A recurrent set of as-
sumptions about “reality,” “human nature,” and “knowledge,” embed-
ded in this ideational network, has infiltrated almost every academic 
discipline and shaped our modern modes of inquiry. Scientistic reduc-
tionism pervades comparative religion as much as any of the other dis-
ciplines that have been herded together as “social sciences”: the term 
itself exposes the kinds of assumptions under discussion. The inter-
est in biography is intertwined with these changes in the European 
mentality and is linked with the habit of mind which might be called 
the “relativizing impulse.” In the biographical field this appears as the 
tendency to see whatever a person thinks or believes as no more than 
a function of social background and personal experience. Whilst this 
has often been a healthy corrective to culture-bound and ethnocentric 
views of “reality” and “normality,” it has also seduced many minds into 
an all-embracing relativism. In castigating this outlook Schuon has 
written that it “will not ask whether it is true that two and two make 
four but from what social background the man has come who declares 
such to be the case. . . .”6 In other words, questions about a more or less 
accidental background take precedence over questions of truth and 
6 F. Schuon, Logic and Transcendence: A New Translation with Selected Letters (Bloom-
ington, IN: World Wisdom, 2009), p. 6.
touchstones of the spirit
90
falsity. Once the objective nature of truth is compromised and every-
thing is seen through the spectacles of relativism, then, of course, such 
a tendency becomes inevitable. 
Psychologism is one of the components of this relativism which 
has now penetrated the European mentality to such an extent that it 
is more or less “invisible,” so much is it taken for granted. The interest 
in biography has been consolidated by a psychologistic outlook which 
is less interested in what a person believes than in why they believe 
it. One of the symptoms of a rampant psychologism is what has been 
called the “psycho-genetic fallacy,” namely, the belief that to explain 
the psychological motivation for an idea is to explain the idea itself. 
Some thinkers make the even graver error of supposing that if an idea 
or belief correlates with some “subconscious wish” then, ipso facto, 
this invalidates the idea as such. However, as Erich Fromm points out, 
“Freud himself states that the fact that an idea satisfies a wish does not 
mean necessarily that the idea is false. . . . The criteria of validity does 
[sic] not lie in the psychological analysis of motivation. . . .”7 No one 
will deny that there is an intimate nexus between a person’s spatio-
temporal situation and his or her beliefs, attitudes, values, ideas, and 
so on. Most of us are creatures of our environment, mentally as well 
as in other ways. The issue at stake here is this: is this all we are? The 
traditional attitude to biography suggests a resoundingly negative re-
sponse to this kind of question. However, before turning to earlier un-
derstandings we should remind ourselves of another trend in modern 
European thought. 
There are those people who, it seems, “invent” or “discover” “new” 
ideas—Newton, Darwin, Freud, or Einstein, to name a few from the 
“pantheon” of modern science. Similarly in the world of the arts: Mi-
chelangelo, or Beethoven, or Tolstoy, we are told, was a creative “ge-
nius,” a special kind of individual. What so impresses us about such 
figures is that they seem to have fashioned, out of their own subjec-
tive resources, some new idea, some originalart form, some fresh 
and startling perception of the world. Our adulation of such figures is 
fuelled by a passion for what is, often improperly, called “originality” 
(“novelty” would usually be more apt). There is no gainsaying the fact 
that the subjective resources, of, say, a Michelangelo were prodigious. 
It is the emphasis on subjectivity which is interesting and revealing. 
7 E. Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion (London: Victor Gollancz, 1951), p. 20fn.
“grass upon the hills”
91
As Coomaraswamy remarked, “Individualists and humanists as we 
are, we attach an inordinate value to personal opinion and personal 
experience, and feel an insatiable interest in the personal experience 
of others.”8 Thus we tend to identify an idea or an art-form with the 
personality which apparently first gave it expression. This tendency is-
sues from a humanistic individualism and has come to color the way 
in which we understand “ideas.” It is certainly no accident that the very 
notion of “genius” (certainly in the sense in which it is now under-
stood) is largely a product of Renaissance humanism. Again, there are 
links with the interest in biography. 
The cultural pedigree of this web of ideas and values which we 
have signaled in short-hand by terms like “individualism,” “human-
ism,” and “scientism” need not concern us here. At present the point is 
simply this: the interest in biography has grown in a distinctive climate 
of ideas. There is, on the other hand, an attitude to biography quite 
at odds with some of these trends—the attitude evinced by Plotinus. 
Before turning to some of the principles which sponsor a distaste for 
biography, a personal reminiscence might not be out of place. 
Some years ago a friend had the privilege of looking after a Tibetan 
lama and of introducing him to a culture which, to him, was strange 
indeed. One of the phenomena which most astonished the lama was 
the European interest in biography. He was amazed to learn that quite 
ordinary people should write about their own lives and those of others, 
and that there should be a sizeable market for such personal histories. 
For him the only biography which could be of any possible value or 
interest was the life of a saint or sage, an exemplary life rather than 
one made up of the “paraphernalia of irrelevant living.”9 Coming from 
what was until recently one of the last bastions of an authentic tradi-
tional culture, the lama was expressing a point of view which nowhere 
would have seemed idiosyncratic until modern times.
 
*
When pressed to write his autobiography Ananda Coomaraswamy, the 
great art historian and perennial philosopher, replied:
8 A.K. Coomaraswamy, Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art (New York: Dover, 
1956), pp. 61-62. 
9 The phrase is borrowed from Patrick White’s novel The Twyborn Affair (London: 
Jonathan Cape, 1979), p. 386.
touchstones of the spirit
92
I must explain that I am not at all interested in biographical matter 
relating to myself and that I consider the modern practice of pub-
lishing details about the lives and personalities of well-known men 
is nothing but a vulgar catering to illegitimate curiosity. . . . All this is 
not a matter of “modesty” but of principle.10
It was the same principle which left Coomaraswamy indifferent to the 
question of copyright in his own works.11 Plotinus has already intro-
duced us to the principle at hand: the plane of the individual human 
ego, of the conditioned, subjective personality and of its doings in the 
world, is the plane of maya, of ephemerality and flux, of imperma-
nence. Insofar as a person is no more than a “product” of this environ-
ment, they are as nothing in the face of Reality. Likewise, any ideas, 
or for that matter any art, which grows out of purely subjective and 
conditioned resources are of no lasting moment. The highest and most 
urgent purpose of life is to free oneself from the limiting contingencies 
of one’s spatio-temporal situation and from the fetters of the ego, to 
liberate one’s Self from one’s self, so to speak, or as Coomaraswamy put 
it, to become no one. 
In one form or another this lies close to the heart of all the great 
religious teachings. As R.D. Laing observed: 
In fact all religious . . . philosophies have agreed that such egoic ex-
perience is a preliminary illusion, a veil, a film of maya—a dream 
to Heraclitus, and to Lao-Tzu, the fundamental illusion of all Bud-
dhism, a state of sleep, of death, of socially accepted madness, a 
womb state to which one has to die, from which one has to be born.12
Such is precisely the point of Christ’s teaching about the corn of wheat,13 
10 A.K. Coomaraswamy, Letter to S.D.R. Singam, May 1946, in Selected Letters, p. 25.
11 See comments by Doña Luisa Coomaraswamy quoted in W. Perry, “The Man and 
the Witness” in Ananda Coomaraswamy: Remembering and Remembering Again and 
Again, ed. S.D.R. Singam (Kuala Lumpur: privately published, 1974), p. 6; see also 
N. Krsnamurti, “Ananda Coomaraswamy” in the same volume, p. 172, and W. Perry, 
“Coomaraswamy: The Man, Myth and History,” Studies in Comparative Religion, 11:3, 
1977, p. 160. 
12 R.D. Laing The Politics of Experience (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), p. 113.
13 John 12:24-25.
“grass upon the hills”
93
of the Prophet’s “Die before ye die,”14 and of an inexhaustible wealth of 
spiritual maxims of like intent from all over the world. Black Elk, the 
revered Sioux holy-man, espoused the same principle when he said, in 
the inimitable idiom of the Plains Indians, 
[W]hat is one man that he should make much of his winters, even 
when they bend him like a heavy snow? So many other men have 
lived and shall live that story, to be grass upon the hills.15 
The lack of historically accurate biographies of the great saints and 
sages, especially in the East, has sometimes been regretted by scholars. 
Often we hear talk about “a lack of a sense of history.” This is to see the 
issue only in negative terms. Frithjof Schuon has commented on this 
question with reference to two of the great Eastern traditions:
What characterizes Buddhism—as also Hinduism a fortiori—is pre-
cisely that it likes to express . . . its consciousness of the “mythologi-
cal” character of all formal data; and that is why it hardly bothers to 
give its symbols any semblance of historicity, indeed quite the con-
trary: it is intent on awakening a presentiment of the great rending 
of the veil and on suggesting in advance that facts themselves are but 
“emptiness.”16
We cannot plumb the depths of the philosophical and metaphysi-
cal issues involved here but the contrast with the modern European ob-
session with history is marked enough.17 From a traditionalist point of 
view this obsession with history and the vogue of private biography are 
nothing other than symptoms of disproportion in the modern outlook, 
especially when these are pursued, as they usually are, in the context of 
profane scholarship. They signify a preoccupation with the worldly and 
14 Quoted in M. Lings, A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century: Shaikh Ahmad al-‘Alawi: 
His Spiritual Heritage and Legacy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), p. 
160. 
15 J.G. Neihardt (ed.), Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala 
Sioux (London: Abacus, 1974), p. 13.
16 F. Schuon, Treasures of Buddhism (Bangalore: Select Books, 1998), p. 205.
17 For some discussion of the traditional Indian attitude to biography see Swami Ta-
pasyananda’s Introduction to Madhava-Vidyaranya’s Sankara Digvijaya: The Tradi-
tional Life of Sri Sankaracharya (Madras: Ramakrishna Math, 1978).
touchstones of the spirit
94
ephemeral, and an indifference to ultimate ends. (The emphasis on a 
sacred history, as in the Judaic tradition, is another matter altogether.) 
Closely associated with this stance is another principle of crucial 
importance. It concerns the nature of “ideas,” of “truth,” and of our 
relationship to truth. The great Frenchmetaphysician, René Guénon, 
stated the principle in striking and unequivocal terms:
[I]f an idea is true it belongs equally to all those capable of under-
standing it; if it is false there is no reason to be proud of having 
thought it. A true idea cannot be “new,” since truth is not a product 
of the human mind; the truth exists independently of ourselves, and 
it is for us simply to comprehend it; outside of this knowledge there 
can be nothing but error. . . .18
Here Guénon is speaking, of course, of the principial domain and not 
of the realm of material exactitudes. In one of his early books Frithjof 
Schuon remarked that, “it will be useless to look for anything ‘pro-
foundly human’ in this book . . . for the simple reason that nothing 
human is profound.”19 He was re-stating the same principle. 
The notion of the independence and non-personal nature of truth 
is nothing new, being repeatedly affirmed within the religious tradi-
tions. Something of the traditionalist attitude to truth is anticipated in 
a passage such as this, from an early Buddhist Scripture:
Whether Buddhas arise, O monks, or whether Buddhas do not arise, 
it remains a fact and the fixed and necessary constitution of being, 
that all its constituents are transitory. This fact a Buddha discovers 
and masters, and when he has discovered and mastered it, he an-
nounces, teaches, publishes, proclaims, discloses, minutely explains, 
and makes it clear.20
We might compare this with the following passage from Cooma-
raswamy: 
18 R. Guénon, Crisis of the Modern World, p. 53. 
19 F. Schuon, The Transcendent Unity of Religions (London: Faber, 1953), p. 15. This 
passage was omitted from later editions.
20 From Anguttara Nikaya III.134. Can one imagine the Buddha claiming that this 
ideas was “his”? The notion is absurd.
“grass upon the hills”
95
There can be no property in ideas. The individual does not make 
them but finds them; let him see to it that he really takes possession 
of them, and work will be original in the same sense that the recur-
rent seasons, sunset and sunrise are ever anew although in name the 
same.21
This is the only kind of “originality” in which the traditionalists are 
interested. 
The traditionalist disposition is also governed by certain moral 
and spiritual values, humility not the least of them. We might profit-
ably pause to ponder the implications of a more or less random sample 
of maxims which affirm another one of the principles informing the 
traditionalist tendency to self-effacement.
A man may receive nothing except it be given him from heaven. (St. 
John)22
[N]o creature, howsoever rational and intellectual, is lighted of itself, 
but is lighted by the participation of eternal Truth. (St. Augustine)23
Outward existence can perform no act of itself; its acts are those of 
its Lord immanent in it. (Ibn Arabi)24
[N]o good thing can be done by man alone. . . . (Black Elk)25
Nothing could be further from the spirit of a humanistic individu-
alism. We are free to take such teachings seriously or not, but in their 
light one begins to understand the moral dimension of the practice of 
anonymity in the eyes of the world. What Coomaraswamy called “the 
21 Quoted in N. Krsnamurti, “Ananda Coomaraswamy,” p. 172. On his own role Coo-
maraswamy wrote, “I regard the truth . . . as a matter of certainty, not of opinion. I 
am never expressing an opinion or any personal view, but an orthodox one” (letter to 
George Sarton, November 1934, in Selected Letters, p. 31).
22 John 3:27.
23 Augustine quoted in W. Perry (ed.), A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom (London: 
Allen & Unwin, 1971), p. 276. 
24 Ibn Arabi quoted in W. Perry (ed.), A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom, p. 341.
25 J.G. Neihardt (ed.), Black Elk Speaks, p. 13.
touchstones of the spirit
96
invisibility proper to the complete philosopher”26 is anchored in the 
virtue of humility, one which Schuon describes as “as a state of empti-
ness in which our thoughts and actions appear foreign to us.”27 
Today the traditionalist posture—the distaste for personal biogra-
phy, the affirmation of the non-personal nature of truth, the immunity 
to self-publicizing, the refusal to identity ideas as one’s “own”—is less 
than common. Nevertheless there remain those who resist all attempts 
to identify the ideas to which they give expression with themselves as 
individual persons, refusing to participate in a kind of “capitalism” of 
ideas where these are seen as the “creation” and “property” of this or 
that thinker. (The copyright laws are, after all, not so different from 
those regulating patents!) Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, explaining to his 
editor his reluctance to make public details of his private life, wrote, 
“there is a sense in which our writings, though born out of ourselves, 
are worth more than what we are.”28 Thomas Merton disclaimed any 
“originality” in his work, writing of one of his books, “We sincerely 
hope that it does not contain a line that is new to Christian tradition.”29 
These remarks share something with the traditionalist position. 
Traditionalists like Guénon and Coomaraswamy were quite un-
concerned with any aspiration towards a personal “creativity” or “orig-
inality” in the sense in which the words are now usually understood. 
Their purpose was the re-expression of the sophia perennis, the time-
less wisdom which is everywhere and always the same but which, ac-
cording to the exigencies of the age, can be expressed anew in such 
a way as to bring humankind back to the truths it enshrines and the 
spiritual path which its realization entails. 
We can see, then, that this attitude to biography is only one thread 
in a whole fabric of ideas and values. It is interwoven with principles 
and values concerning the nature of the human situation, truth, knowl-
edge, the role of ideas, and the traditionalists’ view of their own func-
tion as writers. Any kind of “intellectual individualism,” if one might 
so put it, is out of the question. Thus Coomaraswamy, for instance, 
26 Coomaraswamy in S.D.R. Singam (ed.), Ananda Coomaraswamy, p. 223. 
27 F. Schuon, Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts: A New Translation with Selected 
Letters (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2007), p. 212. 
28 Letter to P.A. Schilpp, reproduced in The Philosophy of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, 
ed. P.A. Schilpp (New York: Tudor, 1972), p. 4.
29 T. Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions), 1972, p. xiv.
“grass upon the hills”
97
abjures any suggestion that he is propounding his own ideas:
I am not a reformer or propagandist. I don’t “think for myself ”. . . . 
I am not putting forward any new or private doctrines or interpre-
tations. . . . For me, there are certain axioms, principles, or values 
beyond question; my interest is not in thinking up new ones, but in 
the application of these that are.30
In other words, it is a matter of being a vehicle for the expression of 
ideas which belong to everyone and therefore to no one. 
30 A.K. Coomaraswamy, Letter to Herman Goetz, January 1947, in Selected Letters, p. 
33. See also his remarks in “The Seventieth Birthday Address”: “[T]he greatest thing I 
have learned is never to think for myself . . . what I have sought is to understand what 
has been said, while taking no account of the ‘inferior philosophers’” (Coomaraswamy 
2: Selected Papers, Metaphysics, ed. R. Lipsey [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 
1977], p. 434).
99
chapter 6 
Joseph Epes Brown’s 
The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian
Joseph Epes Brown’s The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian first 
appeared in 1982, some thirty years after The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s 
Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux, the two being Brown’s 
most salient contributions to our understanding not only of the ritual 
life of the Oglala but of the spiritual heritage of the Plains Indians at 
large. These two volumes, along with John Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks 
(first published 1932),and Frithjof Schuon’s The Feathered Sun (1990), 
provide the foundations for a properly-constituted understanding of 
these subjects, one surpassing anything to be found in the anthropo-
logical and scholarly literature. However, one must acknowledge the 
work of several comparative religionists who, less inhibited by the 
materialistic/functionalistic assumptions which tyrannize much an-
thropological research and more attuned to the realm of the sacred, 
have been able to give us much more adequate interpretations of the 
religious life of the American Indians; we may mention such figures as 
Åke Hultkrantz, Mircea Eliade, Walter H. Capps, and Arthur Versluis. 
In recent decades these sources have been augmented by a burgeon-
ing literature which, insofar as possible, allows Indians to narrate their 
own lives and to explain the spiritual practices of their people; recall 
such works as Thomas Mails’ Fools Crow (1979), Luther Standing Bear’s 
Land of the Spotted Eagle (1980), and Michael Fitzgerald’s Yellowtail: 
Crow Medicine Man and Sun Dance Chief (1991). 
What, it might be asked, are the ideal credentials for someone writ-
ing about “the spiritual legacy of the American Indians”? Well, here at 
least are some of them: a penetrating intellectual discernment in doc-
trinal and spiritual matters, informed by an understanding of the phi-
losophia perennis which underlies all integral traditions; the capacity to 
decipher the symbolic vocabulary in which the myths, doctrines, arts, 
and religious practices of primal traditions are necessarily expressed; a 
first-hand, existential immersion in the traditional spiritual life of the 
peoples in question, accompanied by a properly qualified master or 
adept able to explain authoritatively the meaning of the phenomena at 
touchstones of the spirit
100
hand; a moral integrity and probity of character which ensures that the 
inquiry is not contaminated by subjective prejudices and ambitions; 
a detachment from such sentimentalities and delusions of modern-
ism as cultural evolutionism, progressivism, and historicism, to name 
three closely related follies. If it further be asked how many writers 
on American Indian religions fulfill these criteria, then one can only 
answer, precious few! Joseph Epes Brown (1920-2000) was one such. 
Indeed, as Seyyed Hossein Nasr has written,
America has not produced another scholar of the Native American 
traditions who combined in himself, as did Joseph Brown, profound 
spiritual and intellectual insight, and traditional understanding, the 
deepest empathy for those traditions, nobility of character and gen-
erosity. . . .1 
Professor Nasr’s reference to “nobility of character” should not go 
unremarked: the Plains Indians themselves and the various forms in 
which they expressed their spiritual genius exhibited a nobility and a 
grandeur—often evinced through the symbolism of the eagle, the solar 
bird par excellence—which can only be fully appreciated by those with 
something of these same qualities in their own souls. 
Now we have to hand the commemorative edition of The Spiri-
tual Legacy of the American Indian. All the essays we found in the first 
edition are reproduced here. Several of these—“The Spiritual Legacy,” 
“The Roots of Renewal,” “Sun Dance: Sacrifice, Renewal, Identity”—
have become classics and have re-appeared in various anthologies and 
compilations. But how good it is to have these gems strung again on a 
single cord, to be discovered, we may pray, by a whole new generation 
of readers, Indian and non-Indian alike. These pieces comprise an in-
valuable introduction to the spiritual economy of the American Plains 
Indians in general. Dr. Brown works on a large canvas and is particu-
larly deft in sketching out for the general reader the principles which 
must inform any real understanding—something radically different 
from the mere accumulation of information. His explication of myths, 
rites, and symbols is profound without ever becoming too burdened 
1 Nasr quoted in the “Biography of Joseph E. Brown” in J.E. Brown, The Spiritual 
Legacy of the American Indians: Commemorative Edition with Letters while Living with 
Black Elk, eds. E. Brown, M. Brown Weatherly & M.O. Fitzgerald (Bloomington, IN: 
World Wisdom, 2007), p. 130.
joseph epes brown’s the spiritual legacy of the american indian
101
with detail or retreating into abstract and rarified metaphysical realms 
where many readers would be unable to follow. He also throws into 
sharp relief the sacramental value which, for the Indians, permeated 
the whole of the natural order, and thereby signals the ways in which 
the modern world might yet find a way out of the ecological catastro-
phes which we have brought upon ourselves, upon “all our relatives,” 
and indeed, on Mother Earth herself on whose bounty depends our 
very existence. It is a bitter irony that it should have taken the ever 
escalating environmental calamity to awaken an interest in the ways 
of the Indians, a calamity rooted in the scission between Heaven and 
Earth.
Those familiar with the first edition of The Spiritual Legacy will 
be excited by several intensely interesting additions: a lucid and in-
formative preface by the three editors (Dr. Brown’s wife, daughter, and 
former student and friend, Michael Fitzgerald), drawing attention to 
the significance of some of the new material to be found in the new 
edition; an Introduction by the late Professor Åke Hultkrantz, the re-
nowned scholar under whom the author studied in Stockholm, giving 
a conspectus of Brown’s work and situating it in the framework of the 
philosophia perennis; a most welcome biography of Brown; a compre-
hensive bibliography; a series of previously unpublished photographs 
of some of the most imposing of the spiritual leaders amongst the Indi-
ans. All of this would give us reason enough to acquire the commem-
orative edition but, most important of all, we also find a substantial 
selection from letters written by Joseph Brown during his sojourn with 
Black Elk in the late 1940s—that providential encounter from which 
flowed The Sacred Pipe which, as I have already intimated, is one of a 
very small handful of books which truly is indispensable for an under-
standing of the traditions of the Plains Indian. These letters dramati-
cally illuminate hitherto unknown aspects of the lives of both the au-
thor and of the Oglala sage. They also provide rare insights into the life 
and teachings of other spiritual leaders encountered during Brown’s 
years amongst the Indians, and give some account of his visits to the 
Hopi, Navajo, and Pueblo peoples. 
A good deal of controversy has accumulated around the figure of 
Black Elk in recent years, particularly concerning the volatile question 
of the relationship between his commitment to the ancestral ways and 
his conversion to Catholicism. Much ink has been spilt on this subject, 
often obscuring rather than clarifying the spiritual and intellectual is-
touchstones of the spirit
102
sues at stake. The excerpts from Dr. Brown’s letters, published here for 
the first time, provide a rich vein of material which no one engaged in 
the debate about Black Elk will henceforth be able to ignore. Of special 
interest are the tantalizing references in these letters to the medicine 
man’s relationship with his adopted son, Father Gall, a Trappist monk 
of the Abbaye Notre Dame de Scourmont in Belgium, and the brother 
of Frithjof Schuon. 
This commemorative volume stands as an eloquent and beautiful 
tribute—to the primordial tradition which is its subject, to Black Elk 
whose testimony and example was a veritable font of wisdom for the 
author, and to Joseph Brown himself, in whom the Indians found a 
true friend and a scholar adequately equipped to expound that spiri-
tual wisdom which is indeed the Indians’ most precious legacy. 
II. The Wastelands of Modernity
To say that man is the measure of all things is meaning-
less unless one startstheir superstitious observances can scarcely be designated as divine 
rites being only mysterious works of darkness, revelings, and suchlike” (L.E. Threlkeld 
quoted in Religion in Aboriginal Australia, p. 2).
9 See the historical survey of European attitudes in T. Swain, Interpreting Aboriginal 
Religion: An Historical Account (Adelaide: Australian Association for the Study of Re-
ligion, 1985). 
10 The Age, January 11, 1889, quoted in H. Reynolds (ed.), Dispossession: Black Austral-
“melodies from the beyond”
7
 A militant Christian evangelism helped to erode the early Roman-
tic image of the Noble Savage which had been derived, largely, from 
the writings of Rousseau. (We should note in passing Schuon’s remark 
that although the Noble Savage motif was no doubt largely sentimen-
tal, it was not drawn entirely “out of thin air.”11) With widespread mis-
sionizing activity in Australia and the Pacific came a reaction against 
romantic primitivism: to churchmen of evangelical persuasion it was 
less than proper that “pagan savages” should be idealized as either no-
ble or innocent.12 The theme of the Aborigines’ moral abasement was 
in vogue by mid-century and all manner of pseudo-Biblical rationales 
were invoked to legitimize racialist and self-interested prejudices.
The story of how the whites made the Aborigines exiles in their 
own land is, to say the least, a dismal one. The introduction of Eu-
ropean diseases such as tuberculosis, influenza, and syphilis, the ap-
propriation of Aboriginal hunting grounds, the spreading of malign 
influences such as alcohol and gunpowder, the sexual exploitation of 
Aboriginal women, brutal physical violence escalating into a program 
of genocidal extermination in parts of the continent,13 institutionalized 
racial discrimination ranging from vicious repression to ill-conceived 
paternalism, the legal fiction of terra nullius, and governmental poli-
cies of “assimilation” and “integration,” all played a role in this tragic 
story.14 More crucial perhaps than any of these depredations was the 
ians and White Invaders (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989), p. 9.
11 F. Schuon, Feathered Sun, p. 77.
12 The complex role of Christian missionaries and their impact on Aboriginal culture 
has been vastly oversimplified by apologists on both sides of the fence. It would cer-
tainly be misleading to suggest that the role of the missionaries was entirely destruc-
tive. In some areas the missionaries provided a refuge in which Aboriginal people 
were able to survive physically and in which at least some remnants of traditional cul-
ture were preserved. Nonetheless, a good deal of evil was perpetrated in the name of 
Christianity. For a discussion of this issue see M. Furlong, The Flight of the Kingfisher: 
Journey Among the Kukatja Aborigines (London: Harper Collins, 1996), esp. Ch. 4. 
13 As late as 1902 white commentators were still justifying the deliberate killing of Ab-
origines in terms such as these: “The substitution of more than a million of industrious 
and peaceful people for a roaming, fighting contingent of six thousand cannot be said 
to be dearly purchased even at the cost of the violent deaths of a fraction of the most 
aggressive among them” (H.A. Turner, History of the Colony of Victoria, Vol. 1, [Lon-
don, 1902], p. 239, quoted in Dispossession: Black Australians and White Invaders, p. 9). 
14 As well as the work by Reynolds already cited see H. Reynolds, The Other Side of 
touchstones of the spirit
8
desecration of sacred sites without which Aboriginal religious life 
could not survive. 
Certainly, recent anthropologists have abandoned many of the 
cruder racist assumptions of their predecessors but all too often have 
succeeded only in replacing Victorian prejudices with those more 
characteristic of our own age whilst still retaining a childish faith in the 
capacity of a rationalistic and materialistic pseudo-science to grasp the 
mysteries of a complex spiritual tradition. Nothing more dramatically 
betokens the failure of Durkheimian anthropology than its continuing 
insistence that Aboriginal “religion” is, essentially, a system for sanc-
tioning certain social functions and relationships. Not without reason 
has Mircea Eliade written of the “religious illiteracy” of many scholars 
of so-called “primitive” religious traditions.15 Whilst intellectual fash-
ions amongst ethnologists and anthropologists have changed over the 
last two hundred years the one constant factor has been an intran-
sigent reductionism which refuses to treat Aboriginal religion in its 
own terms or, indeed, in terms appropriate to any religious tradition. 
The theories of Freud, Durkheim, and Levy-Bruhl, for instance, are all 
variations on the reductionist theme.16 But as Whitall Perry once ob-
served, “the scientific pursuit of religion puts the saddle on the wrong 
horse, since it is the domain of religion to evaluate science, and not 
vice versa.”17 Nothing so characterizes the mentality of modernism as 
the naive belief that the greater can be contained in the lesser, which 
is precisely the impossibility attempted when a profane scholarship, 
immune to anything of a spiritual order, tries to force a living tradi-
tion into the sterile categories of a quasi-scientific reductionism—no 
matter whether it be Durkheimian, Freudian, Marxist, or structural-
ist! In the words of W.E.H. Stanner, one of Australia’s more sensitive 
anthropologists,
the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia (Ringwood: 
Penguin, 1982), and C.D. Rowley, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society (Ringwood: 
Penguin, 1972).
15 M. Eliade, Australian Religions: An Introduction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 
1971), pp. xiii-xiv.
16 See E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Theories of Primitive Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 
1965), and M. Eliade, Australian Religions, p. xvii. 
17 W. Perry, review of The Phenomena of Religion, by Ninian Smart, Studies in Com-
parative Religion, 7:2, 1973, p. 127. 
“melodies from the beyond”
9
It is preposterous that something like a century of study, because 
of rationalism, positivism, and materialism, should have produced 
two options: that Aboriginal religion is either (to follow Durkheim) 
what someone called “the mirage of society” or (to follow Freud) 
“the neurosis of society.”18
Such a situation should alert us to the dangers and impostures of 
modernism in its many different “scholarly” guises. From a religious 
viewpoint, we cannot too often recall Schuon’s reminder that, “it is the 
spiritual, not the temporal, which culturally, socially, and politically is 
the criterion of all other values.”19
Aboriginal Culture
In terms of its socio-economic organization Aboriginal culture, over 
most of the continent, was a hunter-gatherer society in which tribal 
members were highly mobile within clearly understood geographi-
cal boundaries, and in which the social dynamics were governed by 
complex kinship and totemic systems, and by principles of reciprocity 
and exchange. The web of beliefs and practices, which might loosely be 
labeled “religious,” is best described as mythologically-based and em-
bedded in a ritual-ceremonial complex centering on a sacramental re-
lationship with the land itself. (If it be asked what is meant by the term 
“sacramental” one can hardly do better than the traditional Christian 
formulation that a sacrament is “an outer and visible sign of an inner 
18 W. E. H. Stanner, “Religion, Totemism and Symbolism,” p. 155. One must, in fair-
ness, concede that anthropology has produced some imaginative, sensitive, and sym-
pathetic scholars who have alerted us to the many misdemeanors of their predecessors 
and who have helped to foster a more respectful approach which tries to understand 
Aboriginal religion in its own terms. The late Professor Stanner, for instance, insisted 
that Aboriginal religion must be studied “as religion and not as the mirror of some-
thing else” and strenuously refuted thefrom the idea that God is the meas-
ure of man. . . ; nothing is fully human that is not deter-
mined by the Divine, and therefore centered on it. Once 
man makes of himself a measure, while refusing to be 
measured in turn . . . all human landmarks disappear. . . .
Frithjof Schuon
105
chapter 7 
The False Prophets of Modernity:
Darwin, Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche
While nineteenth century materialism closed the mind of man to 
what is above him, twentieth century psychology opened it to what 
is below him.
René Guénon1
That which is lacking in the present world is a profound knowledge 
of the nature of things; the fundamental truths are always there, but 
they do not impose themselves because they cannot impose them-
selves on those unwilling to listen.
Frithjof Schuon2
The loss of God is death, is desolation, hunger, separation. All the 
tragedy of man is in one word, “godlessness.”
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourzah3
Permit me to begin with a personal reminiscence. Nearly thirty years 
ago, a decade after completing my undergraduate degree, I decided to 
return to university to pursue postgraduate studies. I wanted to write 
a thesis on the work of Frithjof Schuon, which had first struck me, 
lightning-like, through the anthology The Sword of Gnosis. I was inter-
viewed by the Chair of the Religious Studies Department at the univer-
sity in question and was told, bluntly, that my plan to write a disserta-
tion on the work of Schuon was unacceptable: such a subject did not 
fall within the Department’s frame of what constituted “serious schol-
arship.” I was advised to construct a new research proposal. I will not 
1 R. Guénon, L’Erreur Spirite (1923), quoted in A.K. Coomaraswamy, Hinduism and 
Buddhism (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1996), p. 61.
2 F. Schuon, “No Activity Without Truth” in The Sword of Gnosis (Baltimore: Penguin, 
1974), p. 28; a different translation of this article can be found in H. Oldmeadow (ed.), 
The Betrayal of Tradition (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2004), pp. 3-14.
3 Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, God and Man (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 
1974), p. 68.
touchstones of the spirit
106
here rehearse the somewhat Kafkaesque story of how, through various 
stratagems, I finally persuaded the reluctant professor that I should be 
allowed to proceed with my original plan. Two years later I submitted 
my dissertation. I was asked to identify two possible examiners; well, I 
thought, I’d better grasp the nettle, and so nominated the two most dis-
tinguished academics in the field. My thesis was duly dispatched and 
I spent an anxious couple of months waiting for their reports. Each 
examiner evidently took the view that mercy must sometimes prevail 
over justice; their reports were generous to a fault. The two examiners 
were Professors Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Huston Smith.
I recount this episode for two reasons. Firstly, it provides me with 
the opportunity to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to Professor Nasr 
and Professor Smith, and to say what a singular honor it is to share 
the same platform at this conference. Secondly, it reminds us of the 
melancholy fact that the Wisdom of the Ages is very rarely welcomed 
in academia. The contemporary Western intelligentsia, so-called, has 
been almost completely seduced by the anti-traditional forces of mo-
dernity, a theme which I want to elaborate in this brief address. 
Recall this passage from St. Paul:
Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatso-
ever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things 
are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any vir-
tue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. (Philippians 4:8) 
Many of the speakers at this conference will no doubt be following 
this sage advice. But it has fallen to my lot to speak about less con-
genial matters; sometimes this is necessary to clear away those ideas 
and habits of mind which obscure our view of “whatsoever things are 
true.” If some of my remarks seem intemperate my rejoinder is the 
same as Frithjof Schuon’s: “Some people may reproach us with lack of 
reticence, but we would ask what reticence is shown by philosophers 
who shamelessly slash at the wisdom of countless centuries?”4
The Crisis of Modernity
Let us start with a recognition that there is indeed a fundamental crisis 
in the modern world and that its root causes are spiritual. The crisis 
4 F. Schuon, Stations of Wisdom (London: John Murray, 1961), p. 20n.
the false prophets of modernity
107
itself can hardly be disputed. Some of the symptoms: ecological ca-
tastrophe, a material sign of the rupture between Heaven and Earth; 
a rampant materialism and consumerism, signifying a surrender to 
the illusion that man can live by bread alone; the genocidal extirpa-
tion of traditional cultures by “modernization”; political barbarities on 
an almost unimaginable scale; social discord, endemic violence, and 
dislocations of unprecedented proportions; widespread alienation, en-
nui, and a sense of spiritual sterility amidst the frenetic confusion and 
din of modern life; a religious landscape dominated by internecine 
and inter-religious strife and by the emergence of xenophobic funda-
mentalisms in both East and West; the loss of any sense of the sacred, 
even among those who remain committed to religious forms, many of 
whom have retreated into a simplistic and credulous religious literal-
ism or into a vacuous liberalism where “anything goes.” 
The Vishnu Purana is a Hindu text dating back nearly two millen-
nia. From that work, here is a description of the degenerations which 
can be expected in the latter days of the Kali Yuga:
Riches and piety will diminish daily, until the world will be com-
pletely corrupted. In those days it will be wealth that confers distinc-
tion, passion will be the sole reason for union between the sexes, lies 
will be the only method of success in business, and women will be 
the objects merely of sensual gratification. The earth will be valued 
only for its mineral treasures, dishonesty will be the universal means 
of subsistence, a simple ablution will be regarded as sufficient puri-
fication. . . . The observances of castes, laws, and institutions will no 
longer be in force in the Dark Age, and the ceremonies prescribed by 
the Vedas will be neglected. Women will obey only their whims and 
will be infatuated with pleasure . . . men of all kinds will presump-
tuously regard themselves as equals of Brahmins. . . . The Vaishyas 
will abandon agriculture and commerce and will earn their living 
by servitude or by the exercise of mechanical professions. . . . The 
dominant caste will be that of the Shudras. . . .5
Is this not a painfully accurate picture of our present condition? 
5 Vishnu Purana, quoted in W. Stoddart, An Outline of Hinduism (Washington, DC: 
Foundation for Traditional Studies, 1993), pp. 75-76. These passages, in a different 
translation, can be found in The Vishnu Purana: A System of Hindu Mythology and 
Tradition, Vol. 2, trans. & ed. H.H. Wilson & N.S. Singh (Delhi: Nag Publishers, 1980), 
pp. 662-3, 866-867.
touchstones of the spirit
108
Here is another diagnosis of the contemporary condition, written fifty 
years ago but even more apposite today. It comes from the English 
writer Dorothy Sayers:
Futility; lack of a living faith; the drift into loose morality, greedy 
consumption, financial irresponsibility, and uncontrolled bad tem-
per; a self-opinionated and obstinate individualism; violence, steril-
ity, and lack of reverence for life and property. . . ; the exploitation of 
sex, the debasing of language . . . , the commercializing of religion, 
. . . mass hysteria and “spell-binding” of all kinds, venality and string-
pulling in public affairs, . . . the fomenting of discord. . . ; the exploi-
tation of the lowest and stupidest mass-emotions. . . .6
Little wonder, then, that when Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he 
thought about “Western Civilization,”he replied, “I think it would be 
a good idea.”
These “signs of the times”—and the inventory is by no means ex-
haustive—are plain enough to those with eyes to see. No amount of 
gilded rhetoric about “progress,” the “miracles of modern science and 
technology,” or the “triumphs of democracy” (to mention just three 
shibboleths of modernity) can hide the fact that our age is tyrannized 
by an outlook inimical to our most fundamental needs, our deepest 
yearnings, our most noble aspirations. More problematic is the ques-
tion of how we arrived at this state of affairs and in which direction we 
might turn for some remedy. As Frithjof Schuon observes, 
That which is lacking in the present world is a profound knowledge 
of the nature of things; the fundamental truths are always there, but 
they do not impose themselves because they cannot impose them-
selves on those unwilling to listen.7 
Those truths, so often derided in the modern world, can be found in 
Tradition—and by this term we mean something very different from 
the jaundiced senses it has accumulated in the modern mentality (“the 
blind observance of inherited customs,” and the like). 
For want of a better word we might call the dominant worldview of 
6 D. Sayers, Introductory Papers on Dante (1954), quoted in E.F. Schumacher, A Guide 
for the Perplexed (London: Jonathan Cape, 1977), pp. 151-152.
7 F. Schuon, “No Activity Without Truth,” p. 28. 
the false prophets of modernity
109
the post-medieval West “modernism.”8 For present purposes the term 
comprises the prevalent assumptions, values, and attitudes of a world-
view fashioned by the most pervasive intellectual and moral influences 
of recent European history, an outlook in conformity with the cur-
rent Zeitgeist. One might classify the constituents of modernism under 
any number of different schema. Lord Northbourne typifies modern-
ism as “anti-traditional, progressive, humanist, rationalist, materialist, 
experimental, individualist, egalitarian, free-thinking, and intensely 
sentimental.”9 Seyyed Hossein Nasr gathers these tendencies together 
under four general features of modern thought:  anthropomorphism 
(and by extension, secularism); evolutionist progressivism; the ab-
sence of any sense of the sacred; an unrelieved ignorance of metaphysi-
cal principles.10 
Modernism is a spiritual disease which continues to spread like 
a plague across the globe, destroying traditional cultures wherever 
they are still to be found. Although its historical origins are European, 
modernism is now tied to no specific area or civilization.  Its symp-
toms can be detected in a wide assortment of inter-related “mind sets” 
and “-isms,” sometimes involved in cooperative co-existence, some-
times engaged in apparent antagonism, but always united by the same 
underlying assumptions. Scientism, rationalism, relativism, material-
ism, positivism, empiricism, evolutionism, psychologism, individual-
ism, humanism, existentialism—these are some of the guises in which 
modernism clothes itself. The pedigree of this family of ideas can 
be traced back through a series of intellectual and cultural upheav-
als in European history and to certain vulnerabilities in Christendom 
which left it exposed to the subversions of a profane science. The Re-
naissance, the Scientific Revolution, and the so-called Enlightenment 
were all incubators of ideas and values which first ravaged Europe and 
then spread throughout the world like so many bacilli. Behind the bi-
zarre array of ideologies which have proliferated in the last few cen-
turies we can discern a growing and persistent ignorance concerning 
8 The term should not here be confused with its more restricted meaning, referring to 
certain experimental artistic and literary developments originating in late nineteenth 
century Europe.
9 Lord Northbourne, Religion in the Modern World (London: J.M. Dent, 1963), p. 13.
10 See S.H. Nasr, “Reflections on Islam and Modern Thought,” The Islamic Quarterly, 
23:3, 1979, pp. 119-131.
touchstones of the spirit
110
ultimate realities and an indifference, if not always an overt hostility, 
to the eternal verities conveyed by Tradition. Not without reason did 
William Blake characterize the modern worldview as “Single Vision,” 
a horizontal understanding of reality which strips the “outer” world of 
its mystery, its grandeur, and its revelatory function, and denies our 
human vocation. As the visionary poet so acutely remarked, “Man is 
either the ark of God or a phantom of the earth and the water.”11 
The contrast of tradition and modernity is likely to be most illumi-
nating when it is informed by the following considerations:
When the modern world is contrasted with traditional civilizations, 
it is not simply a question of looking on each side for what is good 
and bad; since good and evil are everywhere, it is essentially a ques-
tion of knowing on which side the lesser evil is to be found. If some-
one tells us that such and such a good exists outside tradition, we 
respond: no doubt, but it is necessary to choose the most important 
good, and this is necessarily represented by tradition; and if some-
one tells us that in tradition there exists such and such an evil, we 
respond: no doubt, but it is necessary to choose the lesser evil, and 
again it is tradition that contains it. It is illogical to prefer an evil that 
involves some benefits to a good that involves some evils.12
No one will deny that modernity has its compensations, though 
these are often of a quite different order from the loudly trumpeted 
“benefits” of science and technology—some of which are indubitable 
but many of which issue in consequences far worse than the ills which 
they are apparently repairing. Furthermore, many so-called “advanc-
es” must be seen as the poisoned fruits of a Faustian bargain which 
one day must come to its bitter finale. What indeed is a man profited 
if he gain the whole world but lose his own soul? On the other hand, 
one real advantage of living in these latter days is the ready access we 
have to the spiritual treasuries of the world’s religious and mythologi-
cal traditions, including esoteric teachings which have hitherto been 
veiled in secrecy.
11 Blake quoted in K. Raine, “The Underlying Order: Nature and the Imagination” 
in Fragments of Infinity: Essays in Religion and Philosophy, A Festschrift in Honour of 
Professor Huston Smith, ed. A. Sharma (Bridport: Prism, 1991), p. 208.
12 F. Schuon, Light on the Ancient Worlds: A New Translation with Selected Letters 
(Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2006), p. 32
the false prophets of modernity
111
Let us turn our attention to just a few characteristic prejudices of 
modern thought and to those habits of mind which have robbed us of 
our birthright as the children of God. I will do so by referring briefly to 
four representatives of modern thought, each an accomplice in the de-
velopment of the modern outlook. Clearly, in the short time available 
I cannot rehearse their theories in any detail. Moreover, I am less con-
cerned with these figures as individual personalities than with those 
tendencies which they articulate and crystallize, and particularly with 
the way that they popularized certain key ideas and themes. As René 
Guénon has remarked, in the intellectual order modernity is rooted 
in a series of pseudo-mythologies which, in the end, amount to little 
more than negations, parodies, and inversions of traditional under-
standings. My four representative figures will be altogether familiar to 
you: Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Ni-
etzsche. It is no accident that they all belong to the nineteenth century, 
the period in which the seeds of revolt against Tradition, sown in the 
late medieval period and the early Renaissance, produced their fullest, 
most seductive, and most noxious blooms, at least on the mental plane; 
the full consequences of that rebellion lay in wait in the twentieth cen-
tury,surely the most blood-stained on record.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Darwin’s hypothesis, foreshadowed in the work of many other con-
temporary scientists and social theorists alike and germinated in the 
sinister population theories of Malthus, is one of the most elegant, se-
ductive, and pernicious of all “pseudo-mythologies.” In a beguiling ad-
mixture of fact, imaginative speculation, circular argumentation, and 
painstaking system-building Darwin seemed to produce an objective 
and scientific account of the development of species, to provide an ac-
count of how life-forms came to be as they are. At the heart of the 
Darwinian schema lies a preposterous inversion of traditional under-
standings. In the opening passage of St. John’s Gospel, one of the most 
exalted mystical texts, we are told that “In the beginning was the Word, 
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word 
became flesh. . . .” (John 1:1,14). Darwin proposes precisely the oppo-
site, that “In the beginning was the Flesh (that is, matter), which be-
came Word (consciousness, or Spirit). . . .” Out of inert matter, through 
some quite unexplained process, emerged microscopic life forms and 
over a very, very long period of time, through endless transformations 
touchstones of the spirit
112
and mutations and in accord with principles which Darwin claimed to 
have discovered, these became homo sapiens. In brief, the microscopic 
organisms from the prehistoric algal slime—organisms whose origins 
Darwin is utterly unable to explain—turn into Man. Or to put it even 
more tersely, the primeval amoeba turns into a St. Francis, an Ibn Ara-
bi, a Lao Tze! Darwin’s whole thesis hinges on the proposition that 
one species can transform itself into another. Whatever partial insights 
Darwin’s work might yield this central theme is an absurdity which 
flies in the face of all traditional wisdom. To call man a “trousered ape” 
betrays a profound misunderstanding of the human condition; as E.F. 
Schumacher observed, one might as well call a dog “a barking plant or 
a running cabbage.”13
Darwinism was a “grand narrative” perfectly suited to all the prej-
udices of the age—an account of the beginnings and the development 
of life which erased the Creator, now replaced by a clutch of more or 
less inexorable “laws” which were amenable to objective explanation, 
an account, moreover, which looked to an inevitable advance. Darwin’s 
transformationist hypothesis not only came to dominate scientific 
thinking but was soon appropriated, in the form of Social Darwinism, 
to buttress all manner of malignant ideas about race, empire, “Prog-
ress,” and the development of civilizations. The pseudo-mythology of 
evolutionism lent itself to social ideologies in which the brutal impera-
tives of competition, self-interest, “survival,” and racial “hygiene” were 
all valorized as “natural.”14 Consider, if you can, the implications of a 
passage such as the following, from Darwin’s own The Descent of Man:
At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the 
civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace 
the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthro-
pomorphous apes . . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break be-
tween man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will inter-
vene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even 
than the Caucasian, and some ape as low a baboon, instead of as now 
between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.15
13 E.F. Schumacher, A Guide for the Perplexed, p. 31.
14 On the social effects of Darwinist ideas see Marilynne Robinson’s essay, “Darwin-
ism” in The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (New York: Picador, 2005), pp. 
28-75.
15 Quoted in M. Robinson, “Darwinism,” p. 35
the false prophets of modernity
113
Darwinism has become a kind of pseudo-religion, a fact which ex-
plains the zealotry with which many scientists remain willfully blind to 
the mounting scientific evidence against the Darwinian scheme, espe-
cially in its absurd claim that one species can transform into another. 
There are many angles from which Darwinism might be exposed as 
fraudulent—scientific, logical, religious, and metaphysical. We cannot 
here rehearse any kind of critique but it is perhaps worth noting that in 
many respects it is a pity that the fight against Darwinism has been car-
ried out by fundamentalist creationists who are quite unable to meet 
Darwin on his own ground. Nonetheless, it should also be noted that 
however naive and sometimes obscufatory such critics often are, their 
fundamental intuition is valid.
Darwin and his epigones offer us a spectacular instance of the 
truth of René Guénon’s observation that
when profane science leaves the domain of the mere observation of 
facts, and tries to get something out of an indefinite accumulation of 
separate details which is its sole immediate result, it retains as one 
of its chief characteristics the more or less laborious construction of 
purely hypothetical theories. These theories can necessarily never be 
more than hypothetical, for facts in themselves are always suscep-
tible of diverse explanations and so never have been and never will 
be able to guarantee the truth of any theory . . . and besides, such 
theories are not really inspired by the results of experience to nearly 
the same extent as by certain preconceived ideas and by some of the 
predominant tendencies of modern thought.16 
The principle which needs always to be foregrounded in any dis-
cussion of modern science is to be found in the Vedantic insistence 
that the world of maya (i.e., the time-space world which science in-
vestigates) is not inexplicable; it is only not self-explanatory. Shankara 
says that any attempt to understand the material world without knowl-
edge of the Real is akin to an attempt to explain night and day without 
reference to the sun. In any case, a profane science can only ever tell 
us about auxiliary and mechanical causes; it can never get to the root 
of things, just as it must remain mute whenever we confront questions 
about meaning and value. As to modern science’s endless accumula-
16 R. Guénon, The Reign of Quantity & The Signs of the Times (Ghent, NY: Sophia 
Perennis et Universalis, 1995), p. 149.
touchstones of the spirit
114
tion of empirical data we need only recall Gai Eaton’s remark that this 
is a matter of knowing more and more about less and less, and that 
“our ignorance of the few things that matter is as prodigious as our 
knowledge of trivialities.”17 
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
A year or two back a British newspaper conducted a poll in which 
readers were asked to nominate the most influential thinker of the 
last thousand years. The runaway winner was Karl Marx, the German 
philosopher, social theorist, Father of Communism (both as a body of 
theory and as a revolutionary political movement), the grave-digger of 
capitalism and religion alike. He might also be described as the author 
of what Carlyle so properly called the “Dismal Science” of economics. 
Marx needs no further introduction here; nor is there any point in 
providing an overview of his theory of dialectical materialism and its 
endlessly elaborated analyses of the forces of production and distribu-
tion in his ponderous magnum opus, a landmark in the emergence of 
that family of disciplines which herd together under the canopy of “the 
social sciences.” No, here I can do no more than allude to a few ideas 
which have become the stock-in-trade of the modern outlook. Let us 
begin with some well-known words from Friedrich Engels’ funeral 
oration:
Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, 
so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the 
simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that 
mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter, and clothing, before 
it can pursue politics, science, art, religion,etc.; that therefore the 
production of the immediate material means, and consequently the 
degree of economic development attained by a given people or dur-
ing a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institu-
tions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the 
people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they 
must, therefore be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto 
been the case.18 
17 Cited as an epigraph in Tomorrow: The Journal of Parapsychology, Cosmology and 
Traditional Studies, 12:3, 1964, p. 191.
18 F. Engels, “Speech at the Graveside of Karl Marx,” in Karl Marx and Frederick En-
gels: Selected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1968), p. 435. 
the false prophets of modernity
115
It was altogether appropriate that Engels should link the thought 
of Marx and Darwin. Indeed, Marx himself remarked, “Darwin’s book 
[On the Origin of Species (1859)] is very important and serves me as a 
basis in natural science for the class struggle in history.”19 Both could 
be said to be children of the so-called Enlightenment: both imagined 
themselves to be engaged in a more less scientific enterprise; each pop-
ularized a form of evolutionist thought, in the biological and social 
domains respectively; both detonated a depth-charge under the foun-
dations of religious belief.
Return for a moment to the passage from Engels. Notice the re-
duction of man to an economic and social animal, a being whose na-
ture is entirely conditioned, indeed determined by material circum-
stances over which he has little control. Man’s spiritual dimension is 
thereby stripped away as no more than the residue of a now-obsolete 
religious conception which hitherto has alienated man from his true 
nature as a social being, fashioned by the material forces of history. We 
are all familiar with Marx’s characterization of religion as “the opium 
of the people,” a drug which deflects their attention from their real 
circumstances with its illusory promises of an afterlife and which an-
aesthetizes their political will. Here is a famous passage from Marx’s 
somewhat fragmentary but lethal writings on religion:
Man, who looked for a superman in the fantastic reality of heaven and 
found nothing there but the reflection of himself, will no longer be 
disposed to find but the semblance of himself, the non-human (Un-
mensch) where he seeks and must seek his true reality. . . . Man makes 
religion, religion does not make man. In other words, religion is the 
self-consciousness and self-feeling of man who has either not yet found 
himself or has already lost himself again. . . . The struggle against re-
ligion is therefore . . . the struggle against the other world, of which 
religion is the spiritual aroma. . . . Religion is the sigh of the oppressed 
creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spirit-
less situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as 
the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. 
. . . The criticism of religion disillusions man and makes him think and 
act and shape his reality like a man who has been disillusioned and has 
come to reason, so that he will revolve round himself and therefore 
19 Letter to Lasalle, January 16, 1861, quoted in F. Wheen, Karl Marx: A Life (London: 
Fourth Estate, 1999), p. 364.
touchstones of the spirit
116
round his true sun. Religion is only the illusory sun which revolves 
round man as long as he does not revolve round himself.20 
Following Feuerbach and Marx, Engels asserted that “All religion, 
however, is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men’s minds of those 
external forces which control their daily life, a reflection in which the 
terrestrial forces assume the form of supernatural forces.”21 This now-
threadbare idea has become the very calling card of the modern intel-
lectual. 
Hand-in-hand with this repudiation of religion and all that it en-
tails, is a secular humanism. In his doctoral thesis Marx had written, 
Philosophy makes no secret of it. Prometheus’ confession “in a word, 
I detest all Gods,” is its own confession, its own slogan against all 
Gods in heaven and earth who do not recognize man’s self-con-
sciousness as the highest divinity.22 
Linked with this humanism, which finds antecedents in the thought 
of Enlightenment thinkers such as Rousseau, there is Marx’s Utopia-
nism, a strain of thought which anticipates a world in which all the 
social iniquities and inequalities, all the class oppressions of the past, 
are devoured in revolutionary violence, ushering in an era in which 
a man might “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle 
in the evening” and philosophize at night.23 At this point in history I 
hardly need observe that Marx’s romantic and apocalyptic Utopianism 
fuelled abuses so many and so monstrous that we can hardly grasp 
their magnitude—a case of making a hell on earth, as the Russian nov-
elist Dostoevsky so chillingly predicted in his own dark masterpiece, 
Notes from Underground (1864). The hallmarks of Marx’s thought, in 
brief: a corrosive and atheistic materialism, a Promethean humanism, 
and a sentimental and potentially murderous Utopianism, and all this 
dressed up in quasi-scientific garb. 
20 A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1844) in K. Marx and 
F. Engels on Religion (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1957), pp. 37-38
21 Anti-Dühring (1878), in K. Marx and F. Engels on Religion, p. 131.
22 Preface to Marx’s doctoral thesis, quoted in D. McLellan, Karl Marx (Glasgow: 
Fontana/Collins, 1975), p. 26.
23 From The German Ideology (1846), quoted in F. Wheen, Karl Marx, p. 96.
the false prophets of modernity
117
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Sigmund Freud, the undisputed progenitor of modern psychology and 
psychiatry, remarked in a letter, “The moment a man questions the 
meaning and value of life he is sick, since objectively neither has any 
existence.”24 From a traditional point of view, one need hardly do more 
than adduce this extraordinary claim to throw Freud’s theorizing out 
of court altogether. As we know, Freud himself harbored an animus 
towards religion which, in his own terms, could only be described as 
pathological. No one needs reminding that the relations between mod-
ern psychology and traditional religions have not always been friendly. 
Freud struck the key note in his insistence that, to state the matter 
as briefly as possible, religious beliefs were a thinly camouflaged pro-
longation of childhood traumas and pathologies. He identified “three 
powers which may dispute the basic position of science”: art, philoso-
phy, and religion, of which, he said, “religion alone is to be taken seri-
ously as an enemy.” Philosophy, he suggested, is basically harmless be-
cause, despite its ambitious pretensions, it “has no direct influence on 
the great mass of mankind: it is of interest to only a small number even 
of top-layer intellectuals and is scarcely intelligible to anyone else.” Art 
“is almost always harmless and beneficent; it does not seek to be any-
thing but an illusion.”25 This leaves religion as “an immense power” and 
an imposing obstacle to the scientific enlightenment of mankind, the 
project in which Freud understood himself to be engaged. 
The last contribution to the criticism of the religious Weltanschau-
ung [he wrote], was effected by psychoanalysis, by showing how re-
ligion originated from the helplessness of children and by tracing 
its contents to the survival into maturity of the wishes and needs of 
childhood.26 
Freud identified three fatal blows against what he called man’s 
“narcissism,” by which he meant the belief that man was made in the 
image of God: Copernican cosmology, Darwinian biology, and psy-
24 Letter to Maria Bonaparte, from Letters of Sigmund Freud, quoted in P. Rieff, The 
Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud (Harmondsworth: Penguin,1973), p. 29.
25 S. Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (London: Hogarth Press, 
1974), pp. 160-161.
26 S. Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, p. 167. 
touchstones of the spirit
118
choanalytical psychology.27 We do not here have time to anatomize 
what Schuon has called the “psychological imposture” and its usurpa-
tion of religious functions which lie well beyond its competence, but 
the drift of much of Freud’s thought can be signaled by a small sample 
of quotations, the sinister implications of which will be readily appar-
ent to you. From New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis:
[The Weltanschauung of science] asserts that there are no sources 
of knowledge of the universe other than the intellectual working-
over of carefully scrutinized observations . . . and alongside of it no 
knowledge derived from revelation, intuition, or divination.28
Many of his observations on religion are now all too well-known. 
Here are a few: 
[Religion is] a counterpart to the neurosis which individual civilized 
men have to go through in their passage from childhood to matu-
rity.29 
I should like to insist . . . that the beginnings of religion, morals, so-
ciety, and art converge in the Oedipus complex.30 
[Religious ideas] are illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, stron-
gest, and most urgent wishes of mankind.31
And this, on the nature of the id, which Freud referred to as “the core 
of our being”: 
It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality. . . . We call it a 
chaos, a cauldron of seething excitations. . . . It is filled with energy 
reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces 
27 S. Freud, Collected Papers, Vol. 1, cited in W. Perry, “The Revolt Against Moses: A 
New Look at Psychoanalysis” in Challenges to a Secular Society (Oakton, VA: Founda-
tion for Traditional Studies, 1996), pp. 17-38. 
28 S. Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, p. 159. 
29 S. Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, p. 168. 
30 S. Freud, Totem and Taboo (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950), p. 156.
31 The Future of an Illusion (1927), in The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund 
Freud, Vol. 21, ed. J. Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1964), p. 30. 
the false prophets of modernity
119
no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction 
of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure 
principle. . . . The id of course knows no judgments of value. . . . The 
quantitative factor, which is intimately linked to the pleasure prin-
ciple, dominates all its processes. Instinctual cathexes seeking dis-
charge—that, in our view, is all there is in the id.32 
Freud’s theories about the “psychogenesis” of religion and his gro-
tesque speculations about the early history of mankind, bear an un-
mistakably evolutionist cast. Here is a representative passage:
While the different religions wrangle with one another as to which 
of them is in possession of the truth, our view is that the truth of 
religion may be left altogether on one side. Religion is an attempt 
to master the sensory world, in which we are situated by means of 
the wishful world, which we have developed within us as a result of 
biological and psychological necessities. But it cannot achieve this. 
Its doctrines bear the imprint of the times in which they arose, the 
ignorant times of the childhood of humanity.33
As Guénon and others have noted, Freud’s agenda might well be 
summed up in one of his own favorite lines from Virgil, and one which 
he inscribed on the title page of his first major work: “If I cannot bend 
the gods, I will stir up hell.”34 Guénon drew attention to some of the 
infernal influences unleashed by Freudian psychoanalysis, putting the 
matter most succinctly when he observed that “While nineteenth cen-
tury materialism closed the mind of man to what is above him, twen-
tieth century psychology opened it to what is below him.”35 A theme 
taken up by Schuon: 
32 S. Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, pp. 74-75. 
33 S. Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, p. 168. 
34 From Virgil, inscribed in Die Traumdeutung (1899), noted in R. Guénon, The Reign 
of Quantity & The Signs of the Times (Ghent, NY: Sophia Perennis et Universalis, 1995), 
p. 355. For some commentary on Freud’s ideas about religion see W. Smith, Cosmos 
and Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief (San Rafael, CA: 
Sophia Perennis, 2008), p. 109, and A. McGrath, The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and 
Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World (London: Rider, 2004), pp. 66-77.
35 From L’Erreur Spirite (1923), quoted in A.K. Coomaraswamy, Hinduism and Bud-
dhism, p. 61. Guénon’s most devastating critique of psychologism is to be found in 
Chapters 24-25 of The Reign of Quantity.
touchstones of the spirit
120
What we term “psychological imposture” is the tendency to reduce 
everything to psychological factors and to call into question not only 
what is intellectual or spiritual—the first being related to truth and 
the second to life in and by truth—but also the human spirit as such, 
and thereby its capacity of adequation and, still more evidently, its 
inward illimitation and transcendence. The same belittling and truly 
subversive tendency rages in all the domains that “scientism” claims 
to embrace, but its most acute expression is beyond all doubt to be 
found in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is at once an end-point and 
a cause, as is always the case with profane ideologies, like material-
ism and evolutionism, of which it is really a logical and fatal ramifi-
cation and a natural ally.36
To put the matter slightly differently we might say that materi-
alism, evolutionism, and psychologism are not in fact three distinct 
theories but rather variants of that singular and eccentric world view 
which Guénon exposed in The Reign of Quantity (1945). 
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
While Darwin, Marx and Freud have long been recognized as three 
massively influential thinkers in whose work several characteristically 
modern ideas are given their most dramatic and potent expressions, 
it is now perhaps time to add the name of Friedrich Nietzsche to the 
roster of the false prophets of modernity. Nietzsche is a particularly 
problematic case, partly because his work is full of coruscating insights 
of an almost entirely destructive kind. Here I can do no more than take 
brief note of his peculiar role in the development of modern thought. 
Nietzsche is best-known for his pronouncement of the “death of God” 
by which he meant that the foundations of a religious worldview had 
now collapsed and that no self-respecting intellectual could any longer 
subscribe to a belief in God. Here he is thundering against all tradi-
tional and religious conceptions:
The “Law,” the “will of God,” the “sacred book,” “inspiration”—all 
merely words for the conditions under which the priest comes to 
power, by which he maintains his power—these concepts are to be 
found at the basis of all priestly organizations, all priestly or priestly-
36 F. Schuon, “The Psychological Imposture” in Survey of Metaphysics and Esoterism 
(Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom Books, 1986), p. 195. 
the false prophets of modernity
121
philosophical power-structures. The “holy lie”—common to Confu-
cius, the Law-Book of Manu, Mohammad, the Christian Church—it 
is not lacking in Plato. “The truth exists”: this means, wherever it is 
heard, the priest is lying. . . .37
Nietzsche also lodged a time-bomb under the whole idea of objec-
tive Truth; his philosophical legacy has yielded its most acidic fruits, 
a century after his death, in the wholesale relativism of postmodern-
ist theorizing as found in the work of such figures as Jacques Derrida 
and Michel Foucault, to mention only two of the self-styled Parisian 
oracles, those “monks of negation” whose work has exercised such 
a corrosive effect on the Academyover the last three decades. Many 
of you will be familiar with other leitmotiv in Nietzsche’s work—his 
lacerating attacks on Christianity, and particularly its spiritual egali-
tarianism; the extolling of the Ubermensch, the “Over-man,” freed 
from the restraints of stifling bourgeois morality, exercising the “will 
to power” in an heroic “self-overcoming”; his consignment of tradi-
tional philosophy, metaphysics, and ethics to the dust-bin of human 
history. As Schuon has remarked of Nietzsche, a certain nobility of 
soul is evident in the work of this troubled genius, particularly in its 
poetic expressions, marked by “the passionate exteriorization of an in-
ward fire, but in a manner that is both deviated and demented”38—the 
deviation evident in Nietzsche’s peculiar amalgam of Machiavelli, Ger-
man romanticism, and a pitiless Darwinism. What was lacking in this 
“volcanic genius” was any real intellectual discernment which might 
have channeled his profound reaction against the mediocrity of the age 
in more profitable directions. 
Nietzsche is indeed a particularly strange case: whilst celebrating 
the “death of God” he simultaneously understood some of its most 
appalling consequences. Consider, for instance, this famous passage 
from The Gay Science:
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright 
morning hours, ran to the market-place and cried incessantly: “I am 
looking for God! I am looking for God!”—As many of those did not 
37 From The Anti-Christ (1888), in The Vision of Nietzsche, ed. P. Novak (Rockport: 
Element, 1996), p. 52.
38 F. Schuon, To Have a Center (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom Books, 1990), p. 15.
touchstones of the spirit
122
believe in God were standing there he excited considerable laugh-
ter. . . . The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with 
his glances. “Where has God gone?” he cried. “I shall tell you. We 
have killed him—you and I. We are all his murderers. But how have 
we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us 
the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when 
we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? 
Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not per-
petually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is 
there any up and down left? Are we not straying as through an infi-
nite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not 
become colder? Is more and more night not coming on all the time? 
Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet 
of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? . . .”39 
As one representative of the Orthodox Church, Metropolitan An-
thony of Sourzah, put it: “The loss of God is death, is desolation, hun-
ger, separation. All the tragedy of man is in one word, ‘godlessness.’”40 
Nietzsche understood this all too well—but he couldn’t help himself, 
seduced by his own delirious dream of the Dionysian Ubermensch. 
Some Common Characteristics
Let me now quickly draw attention to some features shared by these 
four thinkers. These might serve as signposts to some of the most per-
vasive aspects of modern intellectual life: 
• A Spurious “Originality”: Each of these thinkers imagines that he 
has discovered a hitherto unknown secret, a key with which to unlock 
the mysteries of the human condition. For Darwin it is the evolutionist 
schema fuelled by adaptations to the environment, mutations, and the 
“survival of the fittest”; for Marx, the dialectic of the material forces of 
history; for Freud the sexual drive with all its accompanying repres-
sions, projections, complexes, and neuroses; for Nietzsche, the “will to 
power.” There is an apparent novelty in the writings of each of these fig-
ures—hence their elevation to the pantheon of modern thought which 
treasures nothing so much as a mis-named “originality.” In reality, such 
apparently new insights as are to be found in the works of these think-
39 From The Gay Science (1882), in A Nietzsche Reader, ed. R.J. Hollingdale (Har-
mondsworth: Penguin, 1977), pp. 202-203.
40 Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, God and Man, p. 68.
the false prophets of modernity
123
ers often turn out to be a distortion of ideas which have been in circu-
lation for centuries, even millennia. By way of an example one might 
adduce Freud’s unacknowledged debts to Kabbalah.41 The theoriza-
tions of these false prophets often amount to little more than the nega-
tion, parodying, or inversion of traditional doctrines half-understood, 
wrenched out of their spiritual framework and “flattened out.” 
• Evolutionism, Progressivism: Secondly, all four of these “proph-
ets of modernity” succumbed to evolutionist and progressivist ideolo-
gies which engendered a contempt for the past and for our ancestors, 
and indeed, for the very notion of tradition. Of course, the barbari-
ties of the twentieth century, starting on the fields of Flanders, dis-
enchanted some of the more intelligent apostles of Progress but it is 
truly remarkable to witness the tenacious grip this sentimental idea 
still has amongst the Western intelligentsia. Evolutionism and progres-
sivism has also intruded into the domain of religion itself, evident in 
the thought of people such as Teilhard de Chardin, Vivekananda, and 
Aurobindo, to name only three. Not surprisingly, the consequences 
have been disastrous.
• The Idolatry of Reason: The modern mentality is rationalistic, 
materialistic, empiricist, historicist, and humanistic—in the narrow 
sense of the word—and these characteristics too are all too evident 
in the work of our representative figures, three of whom were regular 
worshippers at the Temple of Reason (Nietzsche being the exception). 
The adulation of Reason and of an empirical and materialistic science 
could only arise in a world in which the sacra scientia of the tradi-
tional worlds had been lost. To cleave to these much-vaunted modes 
of modern thought is simply to announce that one is entirely bereft of 
any metaphysical discernment, entrapped in the world of maya, that 
tissue of fugitive relativities which makes up the time-space world. As 
Frithjof Schuon has tersely remarked, “The rationalism of a frog living 
at the bottom of a well is to deny the existence of mountains; perhaps 
this is ‘logic,’ but it has nothing to do with reality.”42 
• The Rejection of Tradition: To succumb to the idolatry of Rea-
son is also, necessarily, to turn one’s back on the ever-present sources 
of traditional intellectuality and spirituality, which is to say doctrine 
41 See W. Perry, “The Revolt Against Moses,” pp. 17-38.
42 F. Schuon, Logic and Transcendence: A New Translation with Selected Letters 
(Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2009), p. 36.
touchstones of the spirit
124
and spiritual method—the epochal Revelations providentially direct-
ed towards various human collectivities, the traditions issuing from 
these Revelations, the Scriptures and commentaries of the doctors and 
sages of each tradition, the witness of the saints and mystics. All this 
is thrown out in favor of the prejudices of the day, largely fashioned by 
those pseudo-mythologies current at any particular moment. In the 
case of our four representatives of modernism we might well refer to 
the pseudo-mythologies of evolutionism, materialism, psychologism, 
and relativism. 
• The Denial of God: Each of these thinkers leaves God out of the 
frame. In the case of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, the disavowal is quite 
explicit whilst in Darwin it is a matter of ignoring the question, which 
amounts to much the same thing. These are godless thinkers who tes-
tify to the truth of Dostoevsky’s frightful premonition that “without 
God, everything is permitted”—again, an insight shared by Nietzsche. 
The transcendent dimension of both the cosmos and the microcos-
mic human being is stripped away to leave us in an entirely horizontal 
world in which there is no longer any sense of our dignity,responsibil-
ity, and freedom as beings made “in the image of God.” In such a world 
there is no longer any sense of the sacred from which we might take 
our spiritual bearings. Our souls cry out for bread but we are given 
stones. 
• The Denial of Man: Finally, let us ask ourselves to what manner 
of self-understanding these pseudo-mythologies force-march us? In 
each case we are offered a meager and charmless portrait of the human 
condition: man as biological organism, as a highly evolved ape whose 
essential function is to ensure the survival of the species, and whose 
behavior is governed by the iron dictates of biological necessity; man 
as economic animal, fashioned by his material environment and by the 
impersonal forces of history; the human being as a puppet of the dark 
forces of the Id; man as a herd-creature, mediocre, cowardly, foolish, 
and deluded, redeemed only by the Ubermensch who dares to exercise 
the will to power. In the face of each of these degraded and bleak ac-
counts of the human being, one can only ask, what could be expected 
of such a creature?—to which the inescapable answer is, not much! Is 
it not one of the most galling ironies of modernity that these much 
vaunted ideologies which, we are told ad nauseam, have emancipated 
us from “the shackles of ignorance and superstition,” have, in reality 
robbed us of all that is most precious in the human estate “hard to 
the false prophets of modernity
125
obtain,” by denying the Divine Spark which we all carry within? This, 
truly speaking, is a monstrous crime against God and thereby against 
humanity. In the light of our general theme at this conference let me 
now turn to a few very brief remarks about Tradition against which we 
are bound to judge the modern world.
The World of Tradition
St. Augustine speaks of “wisdom uncreate, the same now that it ever 
was, the same to be forevermore.”43 This timeless wisdom has carried 
many names: philosophia perennis, Lex Aeterna, Hagia Sophia, Din al-
Haqq, Akalika Dhamma, and Sanatana Dharma are among the better 
known. In itself this truth is formless and beyond all conceptualiza-
tions. Any attempt to define it is, to borrow a metaphor, like trying to 
catch the river in a net. This universal wisdom, in existence since the 
genesis of time and the spiritual patrimony of all humankind, can also 
be designated as the Primordial Tradition. Guénon refers to “the Tra-
dition contained in the Sacred Books of all peoples, a Tradition which 
in reality is everywhere the same, in spite of all the diverse forms it as-
sumes to adapt itself to each race and period.”44 In this sense tradition is 
synonymous with a perennial philosophy or wisdom which is eternal, 
universal and immutable. The Primordial Tradition or sophia perennis 
is of supra-human origin and is in no sense a product or evolute of hu-
man thought. It is the birth-right of humanity. All the great religious 
teachings, albeit in the differing vocabularies appropriate to the spiri-
tual economy in question, affirm just such a principle. Recall Krishna’s 
declaration, in the Bhagavad Gita (4:6) of the pre-existence of his mes-
sage, proclaimed at the dawn of time. Likewise Christ, speaking in his 
cosmic function as incarnation of the Truth, states, “Verily, verily, I say 
unto you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). “Tradition,” then, in 
its most pristine sense is this primordial truth and as such takes on the 
status of a first cause, a cosmic datum, a principial reality woven into 
the very fabric of the universe and ingrained in the human spirit.
“Tradition” also has a secondary meaning, directly pertinent to 
our theme. Etymologically it simply means “that which is transmit-
43 St. Augustine, Confessions, IX.10.xxiv, in R. Bridges (ed. & trans.), The Spirit of 
Man: An Anthology in English and French from the Philosophers and Poets (London: 
Longmans, Green, 1918), book 1, selection 32. 
44 R. Guénon in La Gnose (1909), quoted in W. Perry (ed.), A Treasury of Traditional 
Wisdom (London: Allen & Unwin, 1971), p. 20. 
touchstones of the spirit
126
ted.” Here the term cannot be equated with a formless and immutable 
Truth but is, rather, that Truth as it finds formal expression, through 
the medium of a divine Revelation, in the myths, doctrines, rituals, 
symbols, and other manifestations of any religious culture. As Lord 
Northbourne has observed, “Tradition, in the rightful sense of the 
word, is the chain that joins civilization to Revelation.”45 In this con-
text “tradition” becomes more or less synonymous with “religion,” al-
ways with the proviso that it is integral, orthodox religions of which we 
speak. Let us also not forget that 
When people talk about “civilization” they generally attribute a qual-
itative meaning to the term; now civilization only represents a value 
provided it is supra-human in origin and implies for the “civilized” 
man a sense of the sacred. . . .46 
Traditional societies are grounded in this understanding. Society itself 
represents nothing of permanent or absolute value but only insofar as 
it provides a context for the sense of the sacred and the spiritual life 
which it implies. At radical odds with Tradition, in all of its senses, 
stands the world of modernity and the Promethean hubris which un-
derpins it. 
What, essentially is the message of Tradition and the traditions for 
the modern world? Well, this is a very large question which might be 
answered in any number of ways. A Hindu swami summed up the es-
sential message of his own tradition through four propositions:
1. God is;
2. God can be realized;
3. To realize God is the supreme goal of human existence;
4. God can be realized in many ways.47
Might it not be said, my friends, that this, in capsule form, is the mes-
sage of all religious traditions? 
45 Lord Northbourne, Religion in the Modern World, p. 34.
46 F. Schuon, Understanding Islam (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom Books, 1998), 
p. 26. 
47 Swami Prabhavananda, The Spiritual Heritage of India: A Clear Summary of Indian 
Philosophy and Religion (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1981), pp. 354-355.
the false prophets of modernity
127
Staying Afloat in the Kali Yuga
At a time when the forces of anti-Tradition sometimes seem over-
whelming and when we feel unable to keep our hands to the plough, 
let us recall Frithjof Schuon’s reminder that no effort on behalf of the 
Truth is ever in vain.48 We must dispel the false charges sometimes lev-
eled at traditionalists that they are dusty obscurantists “out of touch” 
with the contemporary world, that they want to “wind back the clock,” 
that they are romantic reactionaries escaping into an idealized past. Let 
us never forget that the essential message of tradition is timeless and 
thus ever new, ever fresh, and always germane to both our immediate 
condition and to our ultimate destiny. As Schuon remarks, a “nostalgia 
for the past” is, in itself, nothing; all that is meaningful is “a nostalgia 
for the sacred” which “cannot be situated elsewhere than in the lib-
erating ‘now’ of God.”49 No doubt our crepuscular era is riddled with 
all manner of confusion but there are always saints and sages in our 
midst to whom we can turn for guidance. In recent times one might 
mention such figures as the Algerian Sufi master, Shaykh Ahmed al-
Alawi, or Hindu sages such as Paramahamsa Ramakrishna, Ramana 
Maharshi and Anandamayi Ma, or Native American visionaries such 
as Black Elk and Yellowtail, or the Christian monk, Henri Le Saux who 
became Swami Abhishiktananda, not to mention the many wise lamas 
and masters of the Far Eastern world, including such figures as His 
Holiness the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh. Then, too, there is the 
abiding work and example of the great perennialists of the modern 
era: René Guénon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Titus Burckhardt, Frith-
jof Schuon, and Martin Lings, to mention only a few who have already 
gone to the further shore. Finally let me finish with some wordsfrom 
Guénon from whom we can draw some encouragement in these dark 
and confused times:
Those who might be tempted to give way to despair should realize 
that nothing accomplished in this order can ever be lost, that confu-
sion, error, and darkness can win the day only in appearance and in 
a purely ephemeral way, that all partial and transitory disequilib-
rium must perforce contribute toward the greater equilibrium of the 
48 F. Schuon, “No Activity Without Truth,” p. 39.
49 F. Schuon, “On the Margin of Liturgical Improvisations” in The Sword of Gnosis, 
p. 353.
touchstones of the spirit
128
whole, and that nothing can ultimately prevail against the power of 
truth; their motto should be the one formerly used by certain initi-
atic organizations of the West: Vincit Omnia Veritas [Truth conquers 
all].50
50 These are the concluding words of René Guénon’s The Crisis of the Modern World 
(first published 1927) (Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 2001), p. 117.
129
chapter 8 
Frankenstein’s Children:
Science, Scientism, and Self-Destruction
Our ignorance of the few things that matter is as prodigious as our 
knowledge of trivialities.
Gai Eaton1
No one will deny that modern science and its technical applications 
have brought the contemporary world many benefits, even if these of-
ten turn out, in the longer term, to be somewhat ambiguous. Nonethe-
less, many people feel a profound unease about many of the applica-
tions, interventions, and changes which come in the wake of scientific 
discoveries. One need only mention such phenomena as genetic engi-
neering, cloning, cryogenics, industrial diseases, “behavior modifica-
tion,” the proliferation of drug-resistant viruses, nuclear and biological 
warfare, and environmental catastrophes of various kinds, to trigger 
well-founded apprehensions about where science and technology 
might be taking us. Not without reason have some of the most disturb-
ing and resonant literary works of the past two centuries been con-
cerned with the unforeseen effects of a runaway science—think, for 
instance, of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and 
Mr. Hyde, or Aldous Huxley’s dystopian vision in Brave New World. 
Increasingly, many thoughtful people are questioning the modern 
shibboleth of an inexorable “progress,” fueled by “science” and imple-
mented by technology.
A decisive shift took place in the European worldview in the 
seventeenth century, through what we now think of as the Scientific 
Revolution: Descartes, Bacon, Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton were 
amongst the seminal figures. The triumph of the scientific outlook was 
more or less complete by the twentieth century and provided the basis 
of the prevailing intellectual orthodoxies amongst the European intel-
ligentsia. Modern science is not simply a disinterested and, as it were, 
1 Cited as an epigraph in Tomorrow: The Journal of Parapsychology, Cosmology and 
Traditional Studies, 12:3, 1964, p. 191.
touchstones of the spirit
130
a detached and “objective” mode of inquiry into the material world; 
rather, it is an aggregate of disciplines anchored in a bed of very spe-
cific and culture-bound assumptions about the nature of reality and 
about the proper means whereby it might be explored, explained, and 
controlled. It is, in fact, impossible to separate the methodologies of 
modern science from their theoretical base which we can signal by the 
term “scientism.” Perhaps the central plank in the scientistic platform 
is the assumption that modern science contains within itself the neces-
sary and sufficient means for any inquiry into the material world, and 
that it can and should be an autonomous and self-validating pursuit, 
answerable to nothing outside itself. This was a new idea in the history 
of human thought, radically at odds with the traditional view that any 
inquiry into the natural world could only properly proceed within a 
larger framework provided by philosophy and religion. 
Modern science, as it has developed since the Renaissance, is 
flanked on one side by philosophical empiricism which provides its 
intellectual rationale, and by technology and industry on the other, a 
field for its applications. It is rational, analytical, and empirical in its 
procedures, material and quantitative in its object, and utilitarian in 
application. By its very nature modern science is thus unable to appre-
hend or accommodate any realities of a supra-sensorial order. Science 
(a method of inquiry) becomes scientism (an ideology) when it refuses 
to acknowledge the limits of its own competence, denies the authority 
of any sources which lie outside its ambit, and lays claim, at least in 
principle, to a comprehensive validity as if it could explain no matter 
what, and as if it were not contradictory to lay claim to totality on an 
empirical basis. (Witness Stephen Hawking’s preposterous pretensions 
to a “Theory of Everything”!) 
Critiques of scientism are much in vogue these days both from 
within the scientific community and from without. The insecure 
philosophical foundations of modern science, its epistemological 
ambiguities, its inability to accommodate its own findings within the 
Cartesian-Newtonian frame, the consequences of a Faustian pursuit 
of knowledge and power, the diabolical applications of science in the 
military industry, the dehumanizing reductionisms of the behavior-
al sciences—all of these have come under trenchant attack in recent 
times. New “discoveries” by physicists and the paradoxes of Quantum 
Theory throw conventional assumptions about time, space, and mat-
ter into disarray; Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, Chaos Theory, 
frankenstein’s children
131
and the “New Physics” cut the ground from under the “objectivity” on 
which science has so much prided itself; the mechanistic conceptions 
of a material science, the very language of science, are found to be use-
less in the face of bewildering phenomena to which Western science 
has hitherto been blind. Everywhere cracks are appearing in the edifice 
of modern science. Titus Burckhardt, writing from a traditional view-
point, exposes some of the issues involved here in writing: 
[M]odern science displays a certain number of fissures that are not 
only due to the fact that the world of phenomena is indefinite and 
that therefore no science could come to the end of it; those fissures 
derive especially from a systematic ignorance of all the noncorporeal 
dimensions of reality. They manifest themselves right down to the 
foundations of modern science, and in domains as seemingly “ex-
act” as that of physics; they become gaping cracks when one turns to 
the disciplines connected with the study of the forms of life, not to 
mention psychology, where an empiricism that is relatively valid in 
the physical order encroaches strangely upon a foreign field. These 
fissures, which do not affect only the theoretical realm, are far from 
harmless; they represent, on the contrary, in their technical conse-
quences, so many seeds of catastrophe.2 
 
Social commentators have become more alert to the dangers of a 
totalitarian materialism, an instrumentalist rationality and its atten-
dant technology. We see that rationality has been allowed to become 
man’s definition instead of his tool. We sense that the disfigurement of 
the environment mirrors our internal state, that the ecological catas-
trophe is rooted in a spiritual crisis which no amount of science and 
technology can, of itself, remedy. We know the truth of Victor Frankl’s 
claim that: 
The true nihilism of today is reductionism. . . . Contemporary ni-
hilism no longer brandishes the word nothingness; today nihilism 
is camouflaged as nothing-but-ness. Human phenomena are thus 
turned into mere epiphenomena.3 
2 T. Burckhardt, “Cosmology and Modern Science” in The Sword of Gnosis, ed. J. 
Needleman (Baltimore: Penguin, 1972), p. 131. 
3 Quoted in E.F. Schumacher, A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Jonathan Cape,1977), p. 15.
touchstones of the spirit
132
Commentators like René Guénon, Theodore Roszak, E.F. Schumacher, 
and Wendell Berry awaken us to the provincialism of modern science 
and to the dangers of “Single Vision.” 
Though modern science has doubtless revealed much material 
information that was previously unknown it has also supplanted a 
knowledge which infinitely outreaches it. We see this in the compla-
cencies and condescensions of those scientists who like to suppose that 
we have “outgrown” the “superstitions” of our ancestors. Here is a ran-
dom example from a prestigious contemporary scientist: 
I myself, like many scientists, believe that the soul is imaginary and 
that what we call our mind is simply a way of talking about the func-
tion of our brains. . . . Once one has become adjusted to the ideas 
that we are here because we have evolved from simple chemical com-
pounds by a process of natural selection, it is remarkable how many 
of the problems of the modern world take on a completely new light.4 
Here indeed is the fruit of a rampant materialism, an “intelligence 
without wisdom.” It is nowadays a commonplace that many of the ills 
of our time stem from the rift between “faith” and “science” but few 
people have suggested any convincing means of reconciling the two. 
Certainly the effusions and compromises of the liberal theologians 
and “demytholgizers” are of no help, marking little more than a thinly-
disguised capitulation of religion to science. One might adduce the 
works of the English theologian, Don Cuppitt, as a case in point. Nor 
should we be seduced by those apparently conciliatory scientists who 
seem willing to allow some sort of place for religious understandings, 
all the while making it clear that science will concede nothing of sub-
stance; here we can find no better exemplar of the mentality in ques-
tion than E.O. Wilson’s immensely popular but muddle-headed work, 
Consilience.5 However, in the light of traditional metaphysical un-
derstandings many of the apparent contradictions between “science” 
and “religion” simply evaporate. It is not necessary, to say the least, to 
4 F. Crick, Molecules and Men, quoted in T. Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics 
and Transcendence in Postindustrial Society (New York: Doubleday, 1972), p. 88. 
5 E.O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (New York, Vintage, 1999). This 
work has been subjected to the most searching criticism by Wendell Berry in Life is 
a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 
2000).
frankenstein’s children
133
throw religious beliefs on the scrapheap because they are “disproven” 
by modern science; nor is it necessary to gainsay such facts as modern 
science does uncover—provided always that what science presents as 
facts are so indeed and not merely precarious hypotheses. 
The key to traditional understandings lies in the nature of their 
symbolism—a mode of knowledge quite inaccessible to the scientific 
mentality. No one will deny that, from one point of view, the earth is 
not the center of the solar system; this is no reason for jettisoning the 
more important truth which was carried by the symbolism of the geo-
centric picture of the universe. Another example: it is preferable to be-
lieve that God created the world in six days and that heaven lies in the 
empyrean above the flat surface of the earth than it is to know precisely 
the distance from one nebula to another whilst forgetting the truth 
embodied in this symbolism, namely that all phenomena depend on 
a higher Reality which determines us and gives our human existence 
meaning and purpose. A materially inaccurate but symbolically rich 
view is always preferable to the regime of brute fact. In falling under 
the tyranny of a fragmentary, materialistic, and quantitative outlook 
modern science is irremediably limited by its epistemological base. 
Of spiritual realities, modern science knows and can know absolutely 
nothing. As Frithjof Schuon observes: 
There is scarcely a more desperately vain or naive illusion—far more 
naive than Aristotelian astronomy!—than to believe that modern 
science, in its vertiginous course towards the “infinitely small” and 
the “infinitely great,” will end up by rejoining religious and meta-
physical truths and doctrines.6 
 
The ways in which the triumph of scientism has contributed to 
man’s dehumanization have been written about a good deal in recent 
years. It matters not a jot how quick contemporary scientists now are 
to disown discredited “facts” which stood between man and any true 
self-awareness—the mechanistic theories of the seventeenth century, 
for instance—on the grounds that these were, after all, only provisional 
hypotheses which a more “humane” scientific vision can now aban-
don. The simple fact is that modern science cannot be “humanized” or 
“reformed” from within itself because it is built on premises which are 
both inadequate and inhuman.
6 F. Schuon Dimensions of Islam (London: Allen & Unwin, 1969), p. 156. 
135
chapter 9 
Computers: 
An Academic Cargo Cult?
In the name of “science” and of “human genius” man consents to 
become the creation of what he has created and to forget what he is, 
to the point of expecting the answer to this from machines. . . . 
Frithjof Schuon1
Machines are in themselves inhuman and anti-spiritual.
Frithjof Schuon2
In the 1620s Francis Bacon, in search of a new scientific method, 
looked forward to the day when “the mind itself be from the very out-
set not left to take its own course, but be guided at every step, and 
the business be done as if by machinery.”3 Descartes was gripped by 
a similar passion for a mode of thought which would be stripped of 
all its most personal qualities. Leibniz dreamed of a machine which, 
programmed with a question, would flash the answer on a screen. In 
1958 Newell and Simon, two of the prime movers in the development 
of so-called artificial intelligence, wrote of machines that “think, that 
learn and create.” The ability of these machines would increase rapidly 
until, “in the visible future . . . the range of problems they can handle 
will be co-extensive with the range to which the human mind has been 
applied.”4 The dream of an infallible, universal scientific method finds 
an echo today in the pursuit of a theory of everything and a machine 
for everything. It seems to many that science has brought us to a new 
frontier of knowledge, and that the dream of “intelligent” machines is 
now a reality. 
1 F. Schuon, Language of the Self (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom Books, 1999), p. 15.
2 F. Schuon, Castes and Races (London: Perennial Books, 1982), pp. 19-20.
3 Bacon quoted in T. Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in 
Postindustrial Societ (New York: Doubleday, 1972), p. 163.
4 Newell and Simn quoted in J. Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason: 
From Judgement to Calculation (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1976), p. 179. 
touchstones of the spirit
136
We now live, we are told, in the Information Age, one in which 
new forms of technology will transform our lives, a transition period 
bringing upheavals no less momentous than those of the Industrial 
Revolution. Leonard Sussman, an American expert on international 
communications, is an unexceptional champion of these changes. In a 
recent article he tells us that
Nearly every man and woman on earth will [soon] be able to com-
municate in a few moments with someone continents away. Every-
one will have immediate access . . . to a vast volume of diverse infor-
mation—a volume such as even the world’s finest libraries or news 
services cannot provide today. The cultures of even the smallest, least 
familiar peoples will be preserved, and made accessible to everyone, 
everywhere. New communications will induce the human mind to 
think more clearly, to test new possibilities, to gain confidence and 
even exhilaration from the process of idea- discovery.5The new technologies bring their own educational imperatives. 
“The core of the problem and the key to its solution [Sussman tells us] 
is the need to computerize information, make it accessible to the broad 
public, and put hundreds of millions to work in the post-industrial 
information era.”6 Communications technology, he asserts, “will soon 
alter all the natural and social sciences, all levels of education, all forms 
of cultural activity, all geopolitics. Everywhere.”7 He enthuses about the 
fact that every eight years computer science doubles the entire volume 
of information available to us. He is hugely excited by the educational 
possibilities:
The new technologies are the conduit for generating vast informa-
tion-power. Almost simultaneously, world-wide, they convey, store 
or retrieve current speech, text, data or pictures, and information 
from all of human history. They also facilitate problem-solving in all 
human disciplines... widen the horizons of individuals through far 
greater cultural and educational opportunities... encourage the user 
to develop greater electronic literacy and the power of logical think-
ing... By mastering intricacies of the computer, we train our biologic 
5 L. Sussman, “The Information Revolution,” Encounter, November 1989, p. 60.
6 L. Sussman, “The Information Revolution,” p. 61.
7 L. Sussman, “The Information Revolution,” p. 65.
computers: an academic cargo cult?
137
brains to think. And perhaps one day we will program the computer 
to develop artificial intelligence.8 
In much the same vein, John Naisbitt tells us in Megatrends that
we now mass-produce information the way we used to mass-pro-
duce cars. In the information society, we have systematized the pro-
duction of knowledge and amplified our brain power. . . . [W]e now 
mass-produce knowledge and this knowledge is the driving force of 
our economy.9 
One could catalogue such commonplaces more or less indefinitely. 
On all sides we are told of the wonders of the new technologies and of 
the almost miraculous feats of the latest “generation” of computers. As 
Theodore Roszak has remarked:
[I]n the presence of so ingenious a technology, it is easy to conclude 
that because we have the ability to transmit more electronic bits 
more rapidly to more people than ever before, we are making real 
cultural progress—and that the essence of that progress is informa-
tion technology.10 
Computers as Cargo Cult
In the Western cultural tradition we can discern a line of thought run-
ning from Bacon and Descartes to the present apostles of the so-called 
“information revolution.” But there is another current in the Western 
tradition, one which resists the ever more imperial claims of the sci-
ences and which is suspicious about the claims made for machines of 
one kind and another. The Faust myth in its various forms, Blake’s pro-
phetic poems, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, various works of the Eng-
lish and German Romantics, Dickens’s novel Hard Times, the work of 
the great French metaphysician, René Guénon, and more recently Kurt 
Vonnegut’s anti-Utopia Piano Player are amongst the many landmarks 
in this counter-tradition. To some it will no doubt seem fanciful that 
8 L. Sussman, “The Information Revolution,” p. 61.
9 Naisbitt quoted in T. Roszak, The Cult of Information: The Folklore of Computers and 
the True Art of Thinking (London: Paladin, 1986), p. 35.
10 T. Roszak, The Cult of Information, p. 29.
touchstones of the spirit
138
such writers have anything to tell us about our current situation.11 Oth-
ers will mutter about Luddites and self-interested cranks, to which one 
can only answer that history has proved the Luddites right in their 
fundamental intuition that machinery would indeed destroy many tra-
ditional arts and crafts, and thus annihilate many honorable vocations 
in which countless generations found dignified work.
The title of this essay suggests that the enthusiasm for the comput-
er in particular, and for other forms of technological whizz-bangery, 
really amounts to a kind of cargo cult. A cargo cult is a quasi-religious 
movement driven by a mistaken attribution of supernatural powers to 
some quite mundane entity and the belief that the paying of homage 
to it will bring a superabundance of material benefits. Something of 
the kind is going on in academia. Not only do we look to these tech-
nologies to solve problems which are quite beyond their capacities but 
our technophilia constitutes a much more serious problem than those 
which we hope can be so solved.
I am no expert on computers or on any other form of technology 
which might be turned to educational ends. I am not embarrassed by 
this fact. It is important that ordinary people involve themselves in this 
debate. It will certainly not do to leave it in the hands of the experts. As 
Roszak remarks in The Cult of Information,
the discussion of computers and information is awash with com-
mercially motivated exaggeration and the opportunistic mystifica-
tions of the computer science establishment. The hucksters . . . have 
polluted our understanding of information technology with loose 
metaphors, facile comparisons, and a good deal of out-and-out ob-
fuscation. There are billions of dollars in profit and a windfall of so-
cial power to account for why they should wish to do this. Already 
there may be a large public that believes it not only cannot make 
judgments about computers, but has no right to do so because com-
puters are superior to its own intelligence—a position of absolute 
deference which human beings have never assumed with respect to 
any technology of the past.12 
I am not blind to the limited but important benefits these new 
technologies can confer. I composed this essay on a Macintosh: its ad-
11 See N.R. Evans, “Ideologies of Anti-Technology,” Quadrant, July 1980.
12 T. Roszak, The Cult of Information, p. 61.
computers: an academic cargo cult?
139
vantages over the typewriter are considerable. I also make frequent if 
cautious use of the internet. But I share Roszak’s view that the educa-
tional claims made for computers are not only grotesquely inflated but 
dangerous. I hope to indicate some of the grounds for concern and to 
explore a few ideas which, in my view, we should strenuously resist. 
Thinking Machines?
The first such idea is that the computer is analogous to the human 
mind, that it can properly be called “intelligent,” that it can replicate 
the higher functions of the human mind. The anthropomorphizing 
of machines, betrayed by the attribution of such qualities as “intelli-
gence,” “memory,” and “friendliness,” is by no means insignificant. Not 
only does the jargon endow computers with qualities they do not pos-
sess but it is often used to affirm the superiority of the computer to the 
human mind which, Naisbitt tells us, “not only is limited in its storage 
and processing capacity, but it also has known bugs; it is easily misled, 
stubborn and even blind to the truth. . . .”13 Conversely, all too often we 
are subliminally exposed to the data processing model of the mind. 
Another contemporary line of thinking leads us to Robert Jas-
trow’s vision of a not-far-distant future where
At last the human brain, ensconced in a computer, has been liber-
ated from the weakness of the mortal flesh. . . . It is in control of its 
own destiny. The machine is its body; it is the machine’s mind. . . . 
It seems to me that this must be the mature form of intelligent life 
in the Universe. Housed in indestructible lattices of silicon, and no 
longer constrained in the span of its years by the life and death cycle 
of a biological organism, such a kind of life could live forever.14 
Thus we not only anthropomorphize the machine, we mechanize our-
selves. I wish I could dismiss this as a nightmarish vision from a sci-
ence fiction novel. 
No one denies that computers can store vast amounts of data, far 
more than can be accommodated in the mind of any individual.fallacy that “the social order is primary and in 
some sense causal, and the religious order secondary and in some sense consequential” 
(W.E.H. Stanner, On Aboriginal Religion, The Oceania Monographs, No. 11 [Sydney: 
University of Sydney, 1963], quoted in M. Eliade, Australian Religions, pp. 196-197). See 
also W.E.H. Stanner, White Man Got No Dreaming: Essays 1938-1973 (Canberra: Aus-
tralian National University Press, 1979). For a fascinating recent account of some of the 
controversies in Australian anthropology see Barry Hill, Broken Song: T.G.H. Strehlow 
and Aboriginal Possession (Sydney: Vintage, 2002).
19 F. Schuon, The Transfiguration of Man (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom Books), 
1995, p. 28.
touchstones of the spirit
10
and invisible grace.”) Aboriginal religion can also be described as “pri-
mal” which is to say that it is prehistoric in origin, non-literate, tribal, 
and one in which the distinction between “religion” and “culture” at 
large has no meaning. The qualities which Hilton Deakin has identi-
fied as characteristic of primal cultures apply specifically to Aboriginal 
society: such cultures are ethnocentric, non-universal, non-mission-
izing; they are intimately related to the natural world by a perceived 
spiritual kinship; they emphasize the existence of supernatural pow-
ers which are accessible to the human world; and they experience the 
world as saturated with spiritual power.20 Schuon’s words concerning 
the American Indians apply equally well to the Aborigines:
The Indian is predisposed towards the suprasensible and strives to 
penetrate the hard wall of the sensible world, seeks openings where 
he can, and finds them chiefly in phenomena themselves, which 
indeed, in their contents, are nothing other than signposts to the 
suprasensible. Things are hard-frozen melodies from the Beyond.21 
Such cultures are also governed by sacred mythic accounts which 
leave them indifferent to the linear and horizontal conception of his-
tory as it is understood in the modern West.22 Of course, we here use 
“myth” not in its pejorative modern sense of a fanciful fabrication but 
rather in its perennial sense as a narrative account carrying metaphysi-
cal and spiritual messages—the sense in which Coomaraswamy used 
the word when he wrote, 
The myth is the penultimate truth, of which all experience is the 
temporal reflection. The mythical narrative is of timeless and place-
less validity, true nowhere and everywhere. . . . Myth embodies the 
nearest approach to absolute truth that can be stated in words.23
The Aboriginal worldview is also underpinned by a “visionary 
20 See H. Deakin, “Some Thoughts on Transcendence in Tribal Societies” in Ways of 
Transcendence: Insights from Major Religions and Modern Thought, ed. E. Dowdy (Ad-
elaide: Australian Association for the Study of Religion, 1982), pp. 95-109. 
21 F. Schuon, Feathered Sun, p. 154.
22 M. Eliade, Australian Religions, pp. xvff.
23 A.K. Coomaraswamy, Hinduism and Buddhism (New Delhi: Munshiram Mano-
harlal, 1995), p. 6.
“melodies from the beyond”
11
geography” which constitutes an ordered and meaningful world and, 
indeed, which situates both the community and individual in relation 
to the whole cosmos.24 
The Religious Heritage
Let us turn to several highly significant and suggestive manifesta-
tions of the Aboriginal religious heritage: the central conception of the 
Dreaming; beliefs about transcendental powers and the soul; the meta-
physics of their sacred geography; the role of the karadji, or “medicine 
man.” The Dreaming is a “plurivocal term with a number of distinct 
though connected meanings,” expressed variously as altjiranga, won-
gar, and bugari.
First, it is a narrative mythical account of the foundation and shap-
ing of the entire world by the ancestor heroes who are uncreated 
and eternal. Second, “the Dreaming” refers to the embodiment of 
the spiritual power of the ancestor heroes in the land in certain sites, 
and in species of fauna and flora, so that this power is available to 
people today. Indeed, one might say that for the Aboriginal his land 
is a kind of religious icon, since it both represents the power of the 
Dreamtime beings and also effects and transmits that power. Third, 
“the Dreaming” denotes the general way of life or “Law”—moral and 
social precepts, ritual and ceremonial practices, etc.—based upon 
these mythical foundations. Fourth, “the Dreaming” may refer to 
the personal “way” or vocation that an individual Aboriginal might 
have by virtue of his membership of a clan, or by virtue of his spirit 
conception relating him to particular sites.25
The Dreaming is an ever-present reality, not only “a long-past pe-
riod in a time when life filled the void. It is rather the ever-present, 
unseen, ground of being—of existence.” As A.P. Elkin has also said, 
“The concept is not of a ‘horizontal’ line extending back chronologi-
cally through a series of pasts, but rather a ‘vertical’ line in which the 
past underlies and is within the present.”26 The landscape as a whole, 
24 On this general subject see M. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of 
Religion (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1959). The phrase “visionary geogra-
phy” is from Henri Corbin.
25 M. Charlesworth, Religion in Aboriginal Australia, p. 10.
26 A.P. Elkin quoted in M. Charlesworth, Religion in Aboriginal Australia, p. 10.
touchstones of the spirit
12
particular sites, objects, myths, rituals, and human groups and indi-
viduals are all inter-related within the Dreaming which is “the most 
real and concrete and fundamental aspect of Aboriginal life and has 
nothing to do with the Western concept of dreaming as an imaginary, 
fantastic, and illusory state of consciousness.”27
All the cardinal features of Aboriginal society are derived from the 
Dreaming:
The most momentous communication is the plan of life itself, the 
all-encompassing scope of which is shown in the shapes of the land-
scape, the events narrated in myth, the acts performed in rites, the 
codes observed in conduct, and the habits and characteristics of 
other forms of life.
We find here a feature characteristic of all religions: the notion of a 
Revelation of supra-human origins which lays down the “will of heav-
en,” and which invites but does not compel conformity to its dictates. 
As a recent anthropologist has noted,
The way in which the plan was “passed on” to humans as the powers 
withdrew above or below the earth is left obscure . . . but at least it is 
certain that men are not constrained to fidelity by their nature. The 
Aborigines know that they can fall away from what their traditional 
culture requires. . . . 28
This is to say that they were no strangers to that fundamental free-
dom which constitutes the human estate, its dignity and its most ter-
rible responsibility. The Dreaming constitutes a revealed mythology 
whilst the ongoing ritual and ceremonial life can be seen as the cord 
which joins Aboriginal society to its supernatural origins. Indeed, as 
Lord Northbourne observed, “Tradition, in the rightful sense of the 
word, is the chain that joins civilization to Revelation.”29 Or again, tra-
27 M. Charlesworth, Religion in Aboriginal Australia, p. 11. See also M. Eliade, Austral-
ian Religions, pp. 1-3.
28 K. Maddock, “The World Creative Powers” in M. Charlesworth, Religion in Aborigi-
nal Australia, pp. 86-87. The immediately preceding quotation is from the same source.
29 Lord Northbourne, Religion in the Modern World (London: J.M. Dent, 1963), p. 34. 
In this context we might also recall Marco Pallis’ definition of tradition as “an effective 
communication of principles of more-than-human origin . . . through use of forms 
“melodies from the beyond”
13
dition might also usefully be thought of as “the mediator between time 
and eternity.” Each of these definitions is perfectly apposite in the Ab-
original context.
The transcendental, world-creative power is known under a va-Com-
puters are also able to process this data with astonishing rapidity. Here 
indeed is an invention which can perform computational tasks with 
13 Naisbitt quoted in T. Roszak, The Cult of Information, p. 52.
14 Jastrow quoted in T. Roszak, The Cult of Information, p. 134.
touchstones of the spirit
140
extraordinary speed and efficiency. There is no denying that the com-
puter is hugely useful for administrative and data-sorting tasks—in 
university administrations and in libraries, for instance. But to move 
from here to the notion that computers can be developed to perform 
some of the higher functions of the human mind is a very dangerous 
move indeed. It is then not such a big step to such absurd lucubrations 
as the following, written by Marvin Minsky in 1970:
In from three to eight years, we will have a machine with the general 
intelligence of a human being. I mean a machine that will be able to 
read Shakespeare, grease a car, play office politics, tell a joke, have 
a fight. At that point, the machine will begin to educate itself with 
fantastic speed. In a few months, it will be at genius level, and a few 
months after that, its power will be incalculable.15 
He added that such machines might well decide to keep humans as 
pets. Minsky’s colleagues at MIT thought this scenario was a bit reck-
less: the general feeling was that such a machine might take up to fif-
teen years to develop. 
The mind-computer analogy depends on another confusion: the 
notion there is some common measure between information and 
knowledge. Much discussion of the possibilities of the computer blurs 
the crucial distinctions between information and information-pro-
cessing on one hand and, on the other, those many capacities of the 
human mind which no computer could possibly replicate—memory, 
imagination, intuition, the creation of ideas, the ability to interpret—
all of which all play their part in the development of what can properly 
be called knowledge. Unhappily, the word “information” 
has received ambitious, global definitions that make it all good 
things to all people. Words that come to mean everything may finally 
come to mean nothing; yet their very emptiness may allow them to 
be filled with a mesmerizing glamour. The loose but exuberant talk 
we hear on all sides these days about the “information economy,” 
“the information society,” is coming to have exactly that function. 
These oft-repeated catchphrases and clichés are the mumbo jumbo 
of a widespread public cult.16
15 T. Roszak, The Cult of Information, p. 10.
16 T. Roszak, The Cult of Information, p. 10.
computers: an academic cargo cult?
141
The computational mode is sequential, regulated, predictable, formal, 
quantitative. But human experience, imagination, thought, and creativ-
ity are not amenable to this model: to reduce the complexities of the 
mind, and the processes of knowing and understanding to a computa-
tional model is to surrender to a reductionist and mechanistic scientism.
Computers cannot deal with the very stuff of human thought. 
They can only offer us mechanical counterfeits. Contrary to much con-
temporary opinion, thought is generated and organized not by data or 
information but by ideas. What are ideas? They are images, metaphors, 
organizing patterns which connect and make meaningful disparate 
phenomena and areas of experience. They derive from our subjective 
experiences, from the creative interplay of imagination and memory 
and feeling as well as from the rational workings of the mind. Human 
memory is nothing like the so-called “memory” of computers which 
is simply the capacity to retrieve data. Human memory represses, dis-
torts, projects, embellishes. It works through the mind, the senses, 
the feelings. Creative thought is supple, unpredictable, fluent, myste-
rious—in short, not at all computer-like. As Kuhn has shown, even 
scientific thought, at least in its higher reaches, is not at all computa-
tional.17 The great scientific discoveries have proceeded through aston-
ishing leaps of the imagination, through intuitions, through flashes of 
insight rather than through either the accumulation of empirical data 
or the workings of an apparently objective rationality. 
Ideas do not grow out of empirical observation nor from raw data; 
they are not based on information. Information may shape and color 
our ideas but certainly cannot constitute them. Ideas are created by a 
consciousness in search of meaning. We cannot think without ideas. 
As Roszak observes, ideas actually generate information rather than 
vice versa, as is so often thought. The mind works with ideas not infor-
mation. Ideas contain, define, and produce information but are by no 
means identical with it.
Every fact grows from an idea; it is the answer to a question we could 
not ask in the first place if an idea had not been invented which iso-
lated some portion of the world, made it important, focused our at-
tention, and stimulated enquiry.18 
17 See T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: Chicago University 
Press, 1963).
18 T. Roszak, The Cult of Information, p. 126.
touchstones of the spirit
142
Information can only be gathered and organized in response to ques-
tions which are governed by ideas and values: “In the long run, no 
ideas, no information.”19 
One of the most fundamental questions, one which is all too fre-
quently ignored in the general enthusiasm for information, is “What 
is worth knowing?” It is also well to remember that there are many 
problems which cannot be addressed let alone solved by any amount of 
information. As Frithjof Schuon has remarked, “That which is lacking 
in the present world is a profound knowledge of the nature of things”;20 
that ignorance certainly can not be remedied by information of any 
kind whatsoever.
If we accept a recent definition of knowledge as the capacity to 
interpret and “to establish relevant relationships or connections be-
tween facts, data, and other information in some coherent form and to 
explain the reasons for those generalizations”21 then the word “knowl-
edge” cannot properly be applied to any of the computer’s capacities. 
Computers are incapable of anything even resembling intuition or 
imagination or human sympathies of any kind. The computer cannot 
possibly generate ideas or values or meanings. Likewise computers are 
utterly incapable of interpretation. Interpretation, if it is to mean any-
thing, must mean the making of judgments—a esthetic, moral, ideo-
logical, intellectual. Learning should consist, among other things, in 
becoming familiar with and learning to handle a diversity of interpre-
tations—interpretations of the human condition, of the social order, of 
art, of philosophy and science, of the natural world, and so on. There 
can, by definition, be no exclusively correct interpretation of anything. 
To speak and write of computers offering us “interpretations” is a 
nonsense: “The prospect of machine interpretation is not only whimsi-
cal; it is absurd. Interpretation belongs to a living mind in exactly the 
same way that birth belongs solely to a living body.”22 Let us also not 
forget the lesson in Plotinus’s dictum of nearly two and a half thousand 
years ago, no less true now that it was then: “Knowing demands the 
organ fitted to the object.” 
19 T. Roszak, The Cult of Information, p. 128.
20 F. Schuon, “No Activity Without Truth” in The Sword of Gnosis, ed. J. Needleman 
(Baltimore: Penguin, 1974), p. 28.
21 D. Bell, “Gutenberg and the Computer,” Encounter, May 1985, p. 17.
22 T. Roszak, The Cult of Information, p. 154.
computers: an academic cargo cult?
143
Computers in the Classroom
An eminent American educationalist, Dr. Ernest Boyer, articulates a 
common hope when he writes that
in the long run, electronic teachers may provide exchanges of infor-
mation, ideas, and experiences more effectively . . . than the tradi-
tional classroom or the teacher. The promise of the new technologyis to enrich the study of literature, science and mathematics, and the 
arts through words, pictures, and auditory messages.23
I am much more sympathetic to Theodore Roszak’s response to 
this claim:
My own taste runs to another image: that of teachers and students 
in one another’s face-to-face company, perhaps pondering a book, a 
work of art, even a crude scrawl on the blackboard. At the very least, 
that image reminds us of how marvelously simple, even primitive, 
education is. It is the unmediated encounter of two minds, one need-
ing to learn, the other wanting to teach. . . . Too much apparatus, like 
too much bureaucracy, only inhibits the natural flow. Free human 
dialogue, wandering wherever the agility of mind allows, lies at the 
heart of education.24 
I cannot claim to be familiar with much of the research done on 
the educational use of computers. However, the evidence with which I 
am familiar25 and my own experience suggest that when computers are 
used as a teaching tool several things are bound to happen: an inordi-
nate amount of time is spent on overcoming technical difficulties and 
on mastering the software; students work largely in isolation from each 
other; contact between student and teacher is most often about proce-
dural problems; almost inevitably the mastery of the software and of 
the machine come to be seen not as means towards some more signifi-
cant educational end, but as ends in themselves. It is as if the filing cab-
inet, the counting machine, and the typewriter had been transformed 
23 Boyer quoted in T. Roszak, The Cult of Information, pp. 77-78.
24 T. Roszak, The Cult of Information, pp. 79-80 (emphasis mine).
25 For instance, C. Beattie, “Packaging Computer Knowledge: The Further Education 
Classroom” in Breaking into the Curriculum: The Impact of Information Technology on 
Schooling, ed. J.F. Schostak (London: Methuen, 1988), p. 177-199.
touchstones of the spirit
144
from useful but humble tools into the very object of study. Similarly 
the ability to manipulate data through a mastery of techniques comes 
to be grossly over-valued. 
The technology also comes to determine the kind of tasks put in 
front of students. It has been claimed that “the computer can be as 
much associated with play, fun, imagination, sharing ideas, self-ex-
pression as it can with rational information manipulation and the rou-
tine mindless repetition of predefined outputs. . . . [T]he difference de-
pends upon how the computer is used and interpreted.”26 This strikes 
me as a very sanguine view indeed. It is much more likely that the 
computer is indeed the last step in a process which began with the sci-
entific revolution of the seventeenth century. Clearly the mystique of 
the computer and of computer-based paradigms derives in part from 
the philosophical traditions of empiricism and rationalism noted at 
the start of this essay. 
[“Smart” machines] have a seductive appeal to the scientific imagi-
nation, which has freely borrowed them as models of the universe 
at large, often reshaping our experience of the world to make it fit 
that model. And in this there can be the real danger that we fall prey 
to a technological idolatry, allowing an invention of our own hands 
to become an image that dominates our understanding of ourselves 
and all nature around us.27 
One need not look far for examples. An eminent American psycholo-
gist: “Many psychologists have come to take for granted in recent years 
. . . that men and computers are merely two different species of a more 
abstract genus called ‘information processing systems.’”28 Ugh!
The triumph of Cartesianism and of a materialistic ideology of sci-
ence has meant 
the expulsion from scientific thought of all considerations based on 
value, perfection, harmony, meaning, beauty, purpose, for such con-
siderations are now regarded as merely subjective and so as irrel-
evant to a scientific understanding of the real “objective” world—the 
26 J.F. Schostak, Breaking into the Curriculum, p. 18.
27 T. Roszak, The Cult of Information, p. 55.
28 George Miller quoted in J. Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason, p. 
158
computers: an academic cargo cult?
145
world of quantity, of reified geometry, of a nature that is impersonal 
and purely functional.29 
Those modes of thought and understanding which go beyond the 
logical and the mechanical, already radically devalued by modern 
scientism, will be even further diminished by our infatuation with 
the computer. The perfect computer-driven classroom project may 
well be the production of the phone book or a railway timetable—a 
vast amount of data, highly organized into a “user-friendly” package! 
The surrender to scientific paradigms of knowledge leads to a kind of 
learning bleached of all questions of taste and value, and “strips human 
thought of its most intimately personal qualities—its ethical vision, its 
metaphysical resonance, its existential meaning.”30 
Recall a short scene from Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times in 
which his abhorrence of a rigorously utilitarian and information-based 
education is most forcefully expressed. The scene is set in the class-
room of a school devoted to the Gradgrind system of education. Sissy 
Jupe, a young girl who has spent most of her life in a traveling circus 
and who has an intimate experience of horses, is unable to satisfy Mr. 
Gradgrind’s demand for a definition of a horse. The star pupil in the 
class is a robotic boy named Bitzer who has no direct experience of 
horses. He is able to supply the necessary definition. It goes this way:
“Quadruped. Gramnivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four 
grinders, four eye teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in spring; 
in marshy countries, sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to 
be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.” Thus (and much 
more) Bitzer.31 
This, surely, needs no comment. 
Where in the domain of the computer is the place for metaphor, 
allegory, symbol, myth, analogy? How is a computer to engender these 
value-laden, unpredictable, and intensely personal modes of thought 
29 P. Sherrard, The Rape of Man and Nature: An Enquiry into the Origins and Conse-
quences of Modern Science (Colombo: Sri Lanka Institute of Traditional Studies, 1987), 
p. 69.
30 T. Roszak, The Cult of Information, p. 159.
31 C. Dickens, Hard Times (first published 1854) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), 
p. 50.
touchstones of the spirit
146
and experience? What becomes of questions concerning meaning, 
beauty, ethics, value? How are we to use a computer in the teaching of 
Homer? I have yet to see cogent answers to such questions.
Nor do I find much to commend the argument that computers 
allow students to take control of their own learning. Within a limited 
arena they may well do so. But on this issue I agree with the observa-
tions of the American poet Wendell Berry: 
The responsibility to decide what to teach the young is an adult re-
sponsibility. When adults transfer this responsibility to the young, 
whether they do it by indifference or as a grant of freedom, they trap 
themselves in a kind of childishness. In that failure to accept respon-
sibility, the teacher’s own learning and character are disemployed, 
and, in the contemporary industrialized education system, they are 
easily replaced by bureaucratic and methodological procedures, “job 
market” specifications, and tests graded by machines.32 
There is a good deal of talk about the ways in which computers 
might “liberate” teachers from some of the tasks which they presently 
carry out. It is much more likely that in the long run the real conse-
quence of this kind of process will be the destruction of the academic 
and teaching profession.
For computer scientists, it is no doubt exciting to ask: “Can we invent 
a machine that does what a teacher does?” But there is another ques-
tion one might ask: “Why should we want to invent a machine to do 
that in the first place?” There was neverany difficulty in answering 
that question where the machine was intended to take over work 
that was dirty, dangerous, or back-breaking. Teaching is hardly any 
of these.33 
Nor will it do to see in the computer an answer to the problems 
of incompetent teaching, student alienation, boredom, and the like. If 
32 W. Berry, Home Economics: Fourteen Essays (San Francisco: North Point Press, 
1987), p. 86.
33 T. Roszak, The Cult of Information, p. 70. See also R. Sworder, “Are We the Last 
Academics?” in Academia Under Pressure: Theory and Practice for the 21st Century, ed. 
M.S. Parer (Churchill, Victoria: Higher Education and Research Development Society 
of Australia, 1992), pp. 233-236.
computers: an academic cargo cult?
147
teachers do not have the energy, the imagination, or the expertise to 
engage their students, or if students are too alienated or distracted or 
demoralized to respond, then this is the problem to be addressed and 
solved “from inside the experience of the teachers and the students. 
Defaulting to the computer is not a solution; it is surrender.”34 I am re-
minded of a Cobb cartoon in which a robot standing in front of a bank 
of computer-like machines addresses a begowned graduate, clutching 
his newly acquired degree: “Haven’t you heard? The Industrial Revolu-
tion is over . . . we won. . . .”
I do not have space here to canvas the ways in which the move 
towards technology-centered teaching might be connected to the view 
of education held by the federal government. It is no secret that the 
universities are increasingly being straitjacketed into a model derived 
from industrial production.35 It does not take much imagination to see 
how these trends might be related. Nor can I here examine the ways in 
which the computing industry has penetrated the educational systems 
in most industrialized countries. The agenda of developing a more or 
less universal computer “literacy” can perhaps more properly be seen 
as a drive to make everyone computer-dependent. The marketing of hi-
tech in the educational arena has been highly aggressive, sophisticated, 
and cynical. This massive intrusion has only rarely been challenged 
from within the education system: more often it has been greeted with 
either mindless enthusiasm or meek surrender. Let us also not forget 
that computers are expensive to manufacture, to service, and to re-
place. Like most modern appliances they have a built-in obsolescence 
which demands constant up-dating—thus a cycle of endless consump-
tion characteristic of our whole industrial system. Nowhere is the lure 
and hypnotic glamour of the new more apparent than in the domain 
of the computer.
The computer was once well described as “a solution in search of a 
problem.” The computer is all too often a false solution to a real prob-
lem or an apparently real solution to a false problem. Our technologi-
cal fundamentalism constitutes the real problem.
34 T. Roszak, The Cult of Information, pp. 79-80.
35 See B. Huppauf, “Universities in the Grip of the Electronic Age,” Meanjin, 42, 1987.
149
chapter 10
Frithjof Schuon on Culturism
Genius is nothing unless determined by a spiritual perspective.
Frithjof Schuon1
One manifestation of the anti-traditional outlook, is the cult of genius 
and the phenomenon of what Frithjof Schuon calls “culturism.” In “To 
Have a Center,” one of his most arresting essays in which he directly 
addresses some specifically modern cultural movements, Schuon ar-
ticulates his governing theme: 
We live in a world which on the one hand tends to deprive men of 
their center, and on the other hand offers them—in place of the saint 
and the hero—the cult of the “genius.” Now a genius is all too often a 
man without a center, in whom this lack is replaced by a creative hy-
pertrophy. To be sure, there is a genius proper to normal, hence bal-
anced and virtuous, man; but the world of “culture” and “art for art’s 
sake” accepts with the same enthusiasm normal and abnormal men, 
the latter being particularly numerous . . . in that world of dreams or 
nightmares that was the nineteenth century.2
That many of these nineteenth century geniuses led unhappy and 
desperate lives only adds to their prestige and strengthens the “seduc-
tion, indeed the fascination, which emanates from their siren songs 
and tragic destinies.” The “unbridled subjectivism” and the “split and 
heteroclite psychism”3 of many of the century’s geniuses often induced 
melancholy and despair, sometimes psychopathology and insanity. 
Now, Schuon readily concedes that profane genius can, “in any human 
climate,” be “the medium of a cosmic quality, of an archetype of beauty 
1 F. Schuon, Art from the Sacred to the Profane: East and West, ed. C. Schuon (Bloom-
ington, IN: World Wisdom, 2007), p. 41.
2 F. Schuon, To Have a Center (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom Books, 1990), p. 8. 
A Virgil, a Dante, a Fra Angelico furnish examples of normal men blessed with a crea-
tive genius.
3 F. Schuon, To Have a Center, p. 9.
touchstones of the spirit
150
or greatness,” in which case we can respect at least some of its produc-
tions even though they lie outside tradition. As he writes elsewhere:
Modern art—starting from the Renaissance—does include some 
more or less isolated works which, though they fit into the style of 
their period, are in a deeper sense opposed to it and neutralize its 
errors by their own qualities.4
However, what we most often witness in the last few centuries is a “use-
less profusion of talents and geniuses” driven by a “humanistic narcis-
sism with its mania for individualistic and unlimited production.”5 Hu-
manism promotes a certain dynamism and a “fruitless moral idealism” 
which “depends entirely on a human ideology.” 
Schuon goes on to illustrate his theme with reference to the lives 
and productions of a gallery of nineteenth century artists, among them 
Beethoven, Wagner, Rodin, Nietzsche, Wilde, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Ib-
sen, Bizet, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky—all figures whose 
prodigious talents were turned astray by an impoverished environ-
ment, which is not to deny the traces of incidental beauty and gran-
deur which can be found in many of their works. Let us briefly consid-
er Schuon’s remarks on a few representative cases. Firstly, Beethoven:
Despite the fact that Beethoven was a believer, he was inevitably 
situated on the plane of humanism, hence of “horizontality.” And 
though there was nothing morbid about him, we note the character-
istic disproportion between the artistic work and the spiritual per-
sonality; characteristic, precisely, for genius arising from the cult of 
man, thus from the Renaissance and its consequences. There is no 
denying what is powerful and profound about many of Beethoven’s 
musical motifs, but, all things considered, a music of this sort should 
not exist; it exteriorizes and hence exhausts possibilities which ought 
to remain inward and contribute in their own way to the contempla-
tive scope of the soul. In this sense, Beethoven’s art is both an indis-
cretion and a dilapidation, as is the case with most post-Renaissance 
artistic manifestations.6 
4 F. Schuon, Art from the Sacred to the Profane, p. 15.
5 F. Schuon, To Have a Center, p. 10.
6 F. Schuon, To Have a Center, pp. 12-13.
frithjof schuon on culturism
151
And all this despite the fact that Beethoven, compared to other ge-
niuses, was “a homogeneous man, hence ‘normal’, if we disregard his 
demiurgic passion for musical exteriorization.” Schuon also notes that
Whereas in Bach or Mozart musicality still manifests itself with fault-
less crystallinity, in Beethoven there is something like the rupture of 
a dam or an explosion; and this climate of cataclysm is precisely what 
people appreciate.7 
Rodin provides an instance of another “powerful and quasi-volca-
nic” genius, “direct heir to the Renaissance” in his titanesque “carnal 
and tormented” productions, reminiscent of ancient naturalism and 
the “sensualcult of the human body.”8 Victor Hugo, on the other hand, 
is no more than a “bombastic and long-winded spokesman of French 
romanticism” who “puffs himself up and finally becomes hardened in 
the passionate projection of himself ”9 (a story repeated many times in 
modern “culture”!). There are others, like Ibsen and Strindberg, who 
become spokesmen for “a thesis that is excessive, revolutionary, sub-
versive, and in the highest degree individualistic and anarchic”:
This kind of talent—or of genius, as the case may be—makes one 
think of children who play with fire, or of Goethe’s sorcerer’s appren-
tice: these people play with everything, with religion, with the social 
order, with mental equilibrium, provided they can safeguard their 
originality; an originality which, retrospectively, shows itself to be a 
perfect banality, because there is nothing more banal than fashion, 
no matter how clamorous.10
 
To turn to one of the more formidable figures of the century, Ni-
etzsche was yet another “volcanic genius”:
Here, too, there is a passionate exteriorization of an inward fire, but 
in a manner that is both deviated and demented; we have in mind 
here, not the Nietzschean philosophy, which taken literally is with-
7 F. Schuon, To Have a Center, p. 13n.
8 F. Schuon, To Have a Center, pp. 13-14. In some sense Rodin is heir to the “blustering 
and carnal paintings of a Rubens” (Art from the Sacred to the Profane, p. 39).
9 F. Schuon, To Have a Center, p. 20.
10 F. Schuon, To Have a Center, p. 20.
touchstones of the spirit
152
out interest, but his poetical work, whose most intense expression 
is in part his Zarathustra. What this highly uneven book manifests 
above all is the violent reaction of an a priori profound soul against 
a mediocre and paralyzing cultural environment; Nietzsche’s fault 
was to have only a sense of grandeur in the absence of all intel-
lectual discernment. Zarathustra is basically the cry of a grandeur 
trodden underfoot, whence comes the heart-rending authentic-
ity—grandeur precisely—of certain passages; not all of them, to be 
sure, and above all not those which express a half-Machiavellian, 
half-Darwinian philosophy, or minor literary cleverness. Be that as 
it may, Nietzsche’s misfortune, like that of other men of genius, such 
as Napoleon, was to be born after the Renaissance and not before it; 
which indicates evidently an aspect of their nature, for there is no 
such thing as chance.11 
Goethe, a well-balanced man with a “lofty and generous” mind, was 
another victim of the epoch “owing to the fact that humanism in gen-
eral and Kantianism in particular had vitiated his tendency towards 
a vast and finely-shaded wisdom” and made him, paradoxically, “the 
spokesman of a perfectly bourgeois ‘horizontality.’”12 
The nineteenth century novelists furnish many instances of “a 
problematic type of talent led astray from its true vocation”: whereas 
in medieval times narratives were inspired by myths, legends, and re-
ligious and chivalrous ideals, in the modern novel they become “more 
and more profane, even garrulous and insignificant.” Their authors 
lived only a vicarious existence through their characters: “A Balzac, 
a Dickens, a Tolstoy, a Dostoevsky lived on the fringe of themselves, 
they gave their blood to phantoms, and they incited their readers to do 
the same . . . with the aggravating circumstance that these others were 
neither heroes nor saints and, besides, never existed.” Furthermore: 
These remarks can be applied to the whole of that universe of 
dreams which is called “culture”: flooded by literary opium, siren 
songs, vampirizing, and—to say the least—useless production, peo-
ple live on the fringe of the natural world and its exigencies, and 
consequently on the fringe—or at the antipodes—of the “one thing 
needful.” The nineteenth century—with its garrulous and irrespon-
11 F. Schuon, To Have a Center, p. 15.
12 F. Schuon, To Have a Center, p. 16.
frithjof schuon on culturism
153
sible novelists, its poètes maudits, its creators of pernicious operas, 
its unhappy artists, in short with all its superfluous idolatries and all 
of its blind allies leading to despair—was bound to crash against a 
wall, the fruit of its own absurdity; thus the First World War was for 
the belle époque what the sinking of the Titanic was for the elegant 
and decadent society that happened to be on board, or what Reading 
Goal was for Oscar Wilde, analogically speaking.13 
 
Then, too, there are the “unhappy painters,” such as Van Gogh 
and Gauguin, both “bearers of certain incontestable values” but whose 
work, “despite the prestige of the style,” is marred by “the lack of dis-
cernment and spirituality.” They also dramatize the tragedy of “nor-
mally intelligent men who sell their souls to a creative activity which 
no one asks of them . . . who make a religion of their profane and indi-
vidualistic art and who, so to speak, die martyrs for a cause not worth 
the trouble.”14 (Gauguin is a particularly interesting case, given the fact 
that Schuon’s own paintings are somewhat reminiscent, in both sub-
ject matter and style, of Gauguin’s.) In another essay Schuon alludes to 
artworks which, to some degree, escape the limitations and distortions 
of the age:
Of famous or well-known painters the elder Brueghel’s snow scenes 
may be quoted and, nearer to our day, Gauguin, some of whose 
canvases are almost perfect, Van Gogh’s flower paintings, Douanier 
Rousseau with his exotic forests akin to folk painting, and, among 
our contemporaries, Covarrubias with his Mexican and Balinese 
subjects. We might perhaps also allude to certain American Indian 
painters whose work shows, through a naturalistic influence, a vi-
sion close to that of the ancient pictography. Conversely, equivalents 
of the positive experiments of modern art can be found in the most 
varied of traditional art, which proves not only that these experi-
ments are compatible with the universal principles of art, but also 
that—once again—“there is nothing new under the sun.”15
 
Returning to “To Have a Center”: Schuon goes on to describe the 
depredations of humanism and the cult of genius in several other fields 
13 F. Schuon, To Have a Center, p. 17.
14 F. Schuon, To Have a Center, p. 19.
15 F. Schuon, Art from the Sacred to the Profane, p. 15.
touchstones of the spirit
154
of “cultural production,” including the theatre, philosophy, and the 
darker recesses of Romanticism, as well as discussing the ostensible 
lack of “culture” (as it is understood in the modern West) amongst 
non-literate peoples. It is worth taking close note of the following re-
marks:
A particularly problematic sector of culture with a humanist back-
ground is philosophical production, where naive pretension and 
impious ambition become involved in the affairs of universal truth, 
which is an extremely serious matter; on this plane, the desire for 
originality is one of the least pardonable sins. . . . The most serious 
reproach we can make concerning the general run of these “think-
ers” is their lack of intuition of the real and consequently their lack 
of a sense of proportion; or the short-sightedness and lack of respect 
with which they handle the weightiest questions human intelligence 
can conceive, and to which centuries or millennia of spiritual con-
sciousness have provided the answer.16
 
The brief account above perhaps suggests that Schuon makes a 
blanket condemnation of modern culture; this is not quite the case. 
What is unequivocally condemned is a kind of humanistic ideology of 
“culturism”—but Schuon remains acutely sensitive to those qualities of 
intelligence and beauty which still appear in various artworks, despite 
the mediocre and spiritually stifling cultural milieu in which they ap-
pear, and which bear witness to the artist’s nobility of soul even when 
this is compromised by the false idol of “art for art’s sake.” Readers who 
turn to the essay in full will find therea carefully nuanced treatment 
of the subject. However, if “it is not easy to have completely unmixed 
feelings on the subject of profane ‘cultural’ genius,” Schuon’s general 
case against humanistic culture is implacable: 
Humanistic culture, insofar as it functions as an ideology and there-
fore as a religion, consists essentially in being unaware of three 
things: firstly, of what God is, because it does not grant primacy to 
Him; secondly, of what man is, because it puts him in the place of 
God; thirdly, of what the meaning of life is, because this culture lim-
its itself to playing with evanescent things and to plunging into them 
with criminal unconsciousness. In a word, there is nothing more in-
16 F. Schuon, To Have a Center, pp. 21-22.
frithjof schuon on culturism
155
human than humanism, by the fact that it, so to speak, decapitates 
man.17
*
All of the “-isms” that have been under discussion as well as countless 
other modernist ideologies with which they consort, amount to bogus 
philosophies because they betray our real nature. And these ideologies 
are everywhere in the contemporary world. It is for this reason that 
Schuon writes, “It is necessary to reject the modern world, its errors, 
its tendencies, its trivialities.”18 Of the countless passages in his writings 
which refute these degraded views of the human condition and which 
affirm our real nature, here is one with which to conclude:
Man is spirit incarnate; if he were only matter, he would be identi-
fied with the feet; if he were only spirit, he would be the head, that is, 
the Sky; he would be the Great Spirit. But the object of his existence 
is to be in the middle: it is to transcend matter while being situated 
there, and to realize the light, the Sky, starting from this intermedi-
ary level. It is true that the other creatures also participate in life, 
but man synthesizes them: he carries all life within himself and thus 
becomes the spokesman for all life, the vertical axis where life opens 
onto the spirit and where it becomes spirit. In all terrestrial creatures 
the cold inertia of matter becomes heat, but in man alone does heat 
become light.19 
17 F. Schuon, To Have a Center, p. 37.
18 Frithjof Schuon, unpublished writings, courtesy of World Wisdom.
19 F. Schuon, The Feathered Sun: Plains Indians in Art and Philosophy (Bloomington, 
IN: World Wisdom Books, 1990), p. 16.
157
chapter 11 
The Past Disowned:
The Political and Postmodern Assault on the Humanities
Almost all the words standing for learning, seriousness, and rever-
ence have in fact been compromised. . . .
Raymond Williams1
Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.
Susan Sontag2
When all have become the breakers of idols, the protector of graven 
images is the true revolutionary.
T.S. Eliot3
In almost any recent period it is not difficult to find claims about the 
crisis in higher education: it is permanently contested territory. The 
present debate is signaled by an avalanche of books, papers, articles, 
and conferences concerned with the future of the whole tertiary system 
in Australia, and, perhaps to an even greater degree, in the USA and 
UK. The current crisis seems particularly acute to those who believe 
that the intellectual and cultural values embodied in the traditional 
ideal of the university should not be discarded into the rubbish bin 
of the past. We have recently seen some of the effects of the political 
centralization and bureaucratization of the tertiary sector. The utili-
tarian model of the university, harnessed to the needs of the national 
economy and clothed in such repellent jargon as “product account-
ability” and “the knowledge industry,” is fraught with all manner of 
hazards. We are living in a period of naked educational functionalism: 
nothing is an end in itself but only a means. Our real business, it seems, 
is no longer the educating of the human person but the training of a 
1 R. Williams, Culture and Society: 1780-1950 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961), p. 135.
2 “Against Interpretation” in A Susan Sontag Reader, ed. E. Hardwick (Harmonds-
worth: Penguin, 1983), p. 99.
3 T.S. Eliot quoted in G.H. Bantock (ed.), T.S. Eliot and Education (London: Faber, 
1970), p. 109. 
touchstones of the spirit
158
Graduate, a Specialist, a Careerist, the making of a particular cog for 
The Economy. How far we have come from that view so eloquently 
expressed by Newman when he wrote:
[K]nowledge is, not merely a means to something beyond it, or the 
preliminary of certain arts into which it naturally resolves, but an 
end sufficient to rest in and pursue for its own sake.4 
Utilitarianism is the order of the day and it is every bit as ugly 
as that educational Gradgrindery which Dickens excoriated in Hard 
Times. Here, however, I wish to focus specifically on the current situa-
tion of the humane disciplines in the Academy, particularly the study 
of literature. 
The Liberal View of the Humanities
The liberal view of education rested on the notion of an intellectual 
and cultural tradition to which every educated person should have ac-
cess, a tradition which we can now see stretching from Homer to Joyce, 
from the Old Testament prophets to Bob Dylan, a tradition which, in 
the words of a contemporary commentator, “can embrace everything 
from Hildegard von Bingen to Cowboy Junkies.”5 This heritage was 
seen to be important for several reasons: firstly because it enshrined 
works of the highest intellectual, aesthetic, and moral qualities, works 
which illumined the question of what it means to be human. It was as-
sumed that Sophocles and the Bible and Shakespeare had something 
of more or less universal interest to offer, that our human potentialities 
had been immeasurably enriched by these works. The tradition was 
also important because, historically, it had shaped the culture to which 
most of us belong. It provided us with a treasure-house of myths, sym-
bols, images, motifs, and narratives, a collective repository gradually 
enlarged and handed down from generation to generation. The task 
of the student of the humanities in particular was, in the first place, to 
pursue a disinterested understanding of what such philosophers and 
painters and writers had to say about the human condition. Such a 
study could free us from the tyranny of the ephemeral, the transient, 
4 Quoted in B. Spurr, “The New Idea of the University,” Quadrant, April 1990, p. 43.
5 R. Wood, “Servants and Slaves: Brown Persons in Classical Hollywood Cinema,” 
CineAction!, 32, 1993, p. 84.
the past disowned
159
the merely fashionable, enabling us to transcend the narrow limits of 
our own historical moment and cultural location. As Matthew Arnold 
wrote in those oft-quoted but now maligned words:
[C]ulture is the great help out of our present difficulties; culture be-
ing the pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, 
on all matters which most concern us, the best that has been said and 
thought in the world; and through this knowledge, turning a stream 
of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits. . . .6
Today such an ideal is, in many quarters, in serious disrepute: to 
attempt to reanimate it is likely to provoke a positive orgy of polemical 
sloganeering. We can, I think, discern two persistent motifs, related 
but distinct, in the widespread repudiation of the Arnoldian view of a 
humane education. For purposes of convenience we can dub these as 
the “political” and the “postmodernist.” 
The Political Critique
The key to the first assault on the liberal view of the humanities lies in 
the word “political,” signaling matters related to the exercise of power. 
The nub of the case is that the traditional view of a humane educa-
tion is part of an intellectual-cultural-institutional complex of factors 
whose covert purpose is the maintenance of a particular set of social 
power relations. Whatever the lofty rhetoric in which the ideal was 
clothed the real functionof this kind of education, it is argued, was and 
is political. The vocabulary of these critics is by now monotonously 
familiar. The most frequently leveled charges: “hierarchicalism,” “elit-
ism,” “sexism,” “racism,” “cultural chauvinism,” “canonic monumental-
ism.” The liberal view of education, it is said, is an exclusivist weapon in 
the hands of a small, white, male elite, a glorification of a cultural and 
political tradition which disenfranchised women, children, slaves, and 
ethnic minorities, one that justifies class oppression, patriarchalism, 
and imperialism, a cultural inheritance which is worshipped as some 
kind of static monument and which incorporates “repressive politics” 
in its canonic texts and in the ways in which these texts are taught. 
These charges are not new. Over a century ago Matthew Arnold found 
it necessary to defend culture against the charge that it was “an engine 
6 M. Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (first published 1869) (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1935), p. 6. 
touchstones of the spirit
160
of social and class distinction, separating its holder, like a badge or 
title, from other people who have not got it.”7
Take a couple of comparatively temperate examples of this kind of 
political view. Thus Henry Giroux, an American professor of education:
How we read or define a “canonical” work may not be as impor-
tant as challenging the overall function and social uses the notion 
of the canon has served. Within this type of discourse, the canon 
can be analyzed as part of a wider set of relations that connect the 
academic disciplines, teaching, and power to considerations defined 
through broader, intersecting political and cultural concerns such as 
race, class, gender, ethnicity, and nationalism. What is in question 
here is not merely a defense of a particular canon, but the issue of 
struggle and empowerment. . . . The notion of the liberal arts has to 
be reconstituted around a knowledge-power relationship in which 
the question of curriculum is seen as a form of cultural and politi-
cal production grounded in a radical conception of citizenship and 
public wisdom.8
Another representative example, from Professor Linda Kerber, re-
cent President of the American Studies Association:
Freed from the defensive constraints of cold-war ideology, empow-
ered by our new sensitivity to the distinctions of race, class, and gen-
der, we are ready to begin to understand difference as a series of 
power relationships involving domination and subordination, and 
to use our understanding of power relationships to reconceptualize 
our interpretation and our teaching of American culture. . . .9
The Chairperson of the National Endowment for the Humanities 
in America has observed that
Viewing humanities texts as though they were primarily political 
documents is the most noticeable trend in academic study of the 
7 Culture and Anarchy, p. 43. True culture, in Arnold’s view, far from being a socio-
economic “badge,” is “an inward condition of the mind and the spirit” (Ibid., p. 48).
8 Quoted in J. Searle, “The Storm Over the University,” New York Review of Books, 
36:19, December 6, 1990, p. 36.
9 From Chronicle of Higher Education, March 29, 1989, quoted in S. Hook, “Is Teaching 
‘Western Culture’ Racist or Sexist?” Encounter, September-October, 1989, p. 19. 
the past disowned
161
humanities today. Truth and beauty and excellence are regarded as 
irrelevant; questions of intellectual and aesthetic quality dismissed.10
This kind of agenda is characteristic of what Richard Rorty termed 
the “new cultural left,” one which would like to make Humanities de-
partments “staging areas for political action.”11 The study of the human-
ities, under this view, should be recognized as a form of “cultural and 
political production,” and should become a forum for self-conscious 
“politicization” and “consciousness raising,” a springboard for radical 
political activity. Thus the “orgiastic massacre of ancestors” goes hand-
in-hand with the Godardian fantasy of a “return to zero.”
Relativism, Deconstructionism, and the Flight into Theory
Similarly, the very notion of a disinterested pursuit of knowledge is 
now, in many quarters, seen to be discredited. The American Council 
for Learned Societies recently released a study entitled Speaking for the 
Humanities:
Over the past two decades, traditional assumptions about ways of 
studying the humanities have been contested in large measure be-
cause a number of related disciplines—cultural anthropology, lin-
guistics, psychoanalysis, the philosophy of language—were under-
going major changes that inevitably forced humanists to ask basic 
questions about their methods and very definition of their fields. . 
. . The challenge to claims of intellectual authority . . . issues from 
almost all areas of modern thought—science, psychology, feminism, 
linguistics, semiotics, and anthropology. . . . 
Or again:
As the most powerful modern philosophies and theories have been 
demonstrating, claims of disinterested objectivity, and universality 
are not to be trusted and themselves tend to reflect local historical 
conditions. . . .12
10 Per P. Brooks: “Western Civ at Bay,” Times Literary Supplement, January 25, 1991, p. 5.
11 Richard Rorty in an address at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, March 1, 
1989, quoted in S. Hook, “Is Teaching ‘Western Culture’ Racist or Sexist?” p. 19. 
12 Speaking for the Humanities, quoted in J. Searle, “The Storm Over the University,” 
p. 39.
touchstones of the spirit
162
One of the most potent schools of thought which has obscured 
the traditional ideal of the humanities is what can loosely be called 
postmodernist theory, that mesmeric light-show of ideas generated 
by European illuminati such as Lacan, Derrida, Barthes, Baudrillard, 
Lyotard, Foucault, and Kristeva. Psychoanalytical theory, linguistics, 
structural anthropology, semiology, and feminist theory have indeed 
all contributed to a dazzling display of intellectual pyrotechnics.
Postmodernism has been notoriously difficult to define and has 
“acquired a wide range of different and often contradictory meanings.”13 
The term has been applied to aesthetics, to political ideology and soci-
ology, to popular culture.14 Jean-Francois Lyotard memorably sketched 
the post-modernist life-style thus: “One listens to reggae, watches a 
western, eats McDonald’s food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, 
wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and ‘retro’ clothes in Hong Kong.”15 As 
another commentator says, “Postmodernism as a cultural movement 
(not as an ideology, theory, or program) has a simple enough message: 
anything goes.”16 The postmodernist theoretical discourse is not dis-
similar: it is indifferent to consistency, continuity, and “wholeness”; it 
stigmatizes all epistemological, moral, and aesthetic “universals” and 
affirms difference; it exhibits “an incredulity about metanarratives”;17 it 
abhors “coherence” and dismantles and collages styles, genres, forms; 
it decomposes “history” and the “past” as a given datum and treats 
it as a “metafictional narrative”; it disdains originality and favors an 
ironic stance. “Pastiche is the lingua franca of postmodernism: apoliti-
cal, ahistorical, promiscuous.”18 Postmodernist theory repudiates the 
13 R. Felski, “Feminism, Realism and the Avant-Garde” in Post-Modern Conditions, 
ed. A. Milner, P. Thomson & C. Worth (Clayton: Center for General and Comparative 
Literature, Monash University, 1988), p. 67 
14 See B. Frankel, “The Cultural Contradictions of Postmodernity” in A. Milner et al., 
Post-Modern Conditions, esp. pp. 95-96.
15 Per Todd Gitlin, “Style for Style’s Sake,” The Weekend Australian, January 21-22, 
1989, “Weekender,” p. 9.
16 A. Heller, “Existentialism, Alienation, Postmodernism: Cultural Movements as 
Vehicles for Change in Patterns of Everyday Life” in A. Milner et al., Post-Modern 
Conditions, p. 7.
17 J. Rundell, “Marx and the ‘Postmodern’ Imageof Society” in A. Milner et al., Post-
Modern Conditions, p. 157.
18 M. Hollway, “Blu-Tack and Temples: Artistic Practice in the Eighties: A Postmod-
ernist View” in A. Milner et al., Post-Modern Conditions, p. 191.
the past disowned
163
“transparency” of art and disavows the traditional privileging of “high 
art” over “popular culture.” It presents “a field of tension which can no 
longer be grasped in terms of categories such as progress and reaction, 
Left vs. Right, present vs. past, modernism vs. realism, abstraction vs. 
representation. . . .”19 A heady brew indeed—hardly surprising that it 
has proved to be so intoxicating! 
As for postmodernism within the Academy it is difficult not to 
share Andrew Milner’s view that
What postmodernism provides us with is . . . an index of the range 
and extent of the Western intelligentsia’s own internal crisis, that is, 
its collective crisis of faith in its own self-proclaimedly adversarial 
and redemptive functions.20
We do not have time here to enter the labyrinthine maze of post-
modernist critical theory and to track our way through the corridors 
of this intellectual Disneyland, with seductive but elusive attractions 
on all sides. Let us rather, for the moment, set our sights on one tar-
get—the “death of the author.” As John Caughie has recently reminded 
us 
The challenge to the concept of the author . . . has been decisive in 
contemporary criticism and aesthetic theory. . . . [T]he result has 
been a reconsideration of the text . . . as a structured play of forces, 
relations, and discourses, rather than as a site of final, unified mean-
ings, authorized by their source.21
In postmodernist critical discourse “the author,” “the artist,” “the 
work,” even “meaning,” “cognition,” “reality” itself, “dissolve” or “decon-
struct” or “decompose” into chimera or mirages. We now talk rather of 
“texts,” “discourses,” “games,” “images,” “simulations,” “consumptions,” 
and “readings.” The literary work becomes a kind of epiphenomenon 
19 A. Huyssen, “Mapping the Postmodern,” New German Critique, 33, 1984, quoted in 
R. Felski, “Feminism, realism and the avant-garde,” p. 68.
20 A. Milner, “Postmodernism and Popular Culture,” Meanjin, 49:1, November 1990, 
pp. 37-38.
21 J. Caughie (ed.), Theories of Authorship: A Reader (London: Routledge & Kegan 
Paul, 1981), p. 1
touchstones of the spirit
164
of “reading,” the “project” or “production” of the “reading subject.”22
We now know [wrote Roland Barthes in 1968] that a text is not a line 
of words releasing a single “theological” meaning (the “message” of 
the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety 
of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tis-
sue of quotations. . . .23
Semiotic theory, drawing on linguistic and perception theory and 
on Lacanian psychoanalytic models, views any text—a novel, a film, an 
advertisement, even a building or a city landscape—as a complex set 
of fluid relations between authors (as “subject-positions”), texts, and 
readers. The meaning of a text is not set in concrete by an intentional 
author but is created anew at every “reading.” Those stylistic/thematic 
properties which we read off the text and which we ascribe to an au-
thor are, Foucault tells us, “projections of our way of handling texts”; 
in a fundamental sense the “author is in fact created by the reader.”24
Post-structuralist semiotic criticism undertakes to “open out” the 
text as a process “obedient to a certain history and to certain ‘orders 
of discourse’ rather than to the personality and self-expression of the 
author.”25 The task of criticism is no longer the “construction of the 
author” but the explication of the discursive organization on which the 
text is founded and which “negotiates its relationship with its historical 
audience.” Critical attention moves away from an illusory expressive 
author onto the structures, codes, and conventions, the language of 
the discursive mode in question, onto signifying practices. Any overt 
concern with intentional meaning becomes a kind of “philistinism.”26
Under pressure from these kinds of ideas the study of literature 
increasingly turns away from the criticism of works to the construction 
22 For a brief discussion of some of these points see D. Bennett, “Wrapping up Post-
modernism: The Subject of Consumption versus the Subject of Cognition” in A. Mil-
ner et al., Post-Modern Conditions, pp. 15-36.
23 R. Barthes, Image, Music, Text, ed. S. Heath, (London: Fontana, 1977), p.146. For a 
brief but iridescent account of Barthes’ work see S. Sontag, “Writing Itself: On Roland 
Barthes” in A Susan Sontag Reader, pp. 425-446.
24 S. Crofts, “Authorship and Hollywood,” Wide Angle, 6:1, 1984, p. 17.
25 J. Caughie, Theories of Authorship, p. 1.
26 S. Sontag, “Against Interpretation,” p. 96.
the past disowned
165
of theory.27 By “criticism” I refer to a personal engagement, one that is 
both intense and open-ended, both mental and emotional, intellectual 
and moral, with a work of literature or art or philosophy, a work which 
the critic approaches on its own terms and in an initial state of intel-
lectual humility and receptivity. The critic allows the work to speak and 
is willing to learn from the work rather than immediately plunging into 
some kind of “deconstruction.” As Mircea Eliade reminds us
A work of art reveals its meaning only insofar as it is regarded as an 
autonomous creation; that is, insofar as we accept its mode of be-
ing—that of an artistic creation—and do not reduce it to one of its 
constituent elements . . . or to one of its subsequent uses. . . .28
The lexicon of abuse favored by the postmodernist theorists is il-
luminating: one can hardly do worse than be labeled a “humanist,” a 
“moralist,” a “traditionalist,” a “romantic,” perhaps worst of all in the 
literary field, a “Leavisite”! 
The Barthesian announcement of the death of the author is only 
one fragment in the kaleidoscopic glitter of postmodernist decon-
structionism. We have dwelt on it here to throw into sharp relief the 
“deconstructive” impulses of postmodern theorizing and to illustrate 
its corrosive affects on one particular discipline. One might equally 
well refer to Foucault’s assault on the idea of a continuous and intel-
ligible past which has sabotaged the study of history, or to Derrida’s 
subversion of the idea of truth, perhaps the final step of continental 
philosophy into an unbridled relativism, if one might so paradoxically 
express it.
 
Defending the Liberal View
(a)Politics
In formulating some sort of response to the political critique I make 
three preliminary points. Firstly, the critique reifies its own image of 
the tradition, an image which often seems to be willfully ignorant. One 
27 On this subject see two amusing essays, “French Letters: Theories of the New Nov-
el” and “The Hacks of Academe” by Gore Vidal in Matters of Fact and of Fiction (New 
York: Vintage Books, 1978), pp. 65-98.
28 M. Eliade, “A New Humanism” in The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), p. 6.
touchstones of the spirit
166
can look into the tradition at almost any point to see that the tradition 
itself, is in large measure, subversive, skeptical, critical. We need think 
only of Socrates, Thucydides, and Euripides to choose three contem-
poraneous classical examples. We find in the works of such authors the 
most searching inquiry into the prevailing values, ideas, and assump-
tions of the day, a profound criticism of the “dominant ideology” if 
you will. There is no more devastating attack on the ethos of pragmatic 
power politics and imperialism than we find in Thucydides, no more 
penetrating exposure of religious and political conservatism than we 
find in the plays of Euripides, no more relentless stripping away of cli-
chéd and conformist thinking than we find in Socrates. To label such 
thinkers and such works as “hegemonic,” “elitist,” and“chauvinist,” as 
being intent on legitimizing the political status quo, is simply not to 
have read them and is to indulge in a kind of political reductionism 
which is ignorant, facile, and deeply cynical. (To take note of the fact 
that all these thinkers are male, that they belonged to a particular elite, 
and to press questions about the relationship of their work and ideas 
to their social position is altogether another matter.) No properly con-
stituted radicalism should find it necessary to resort to this kind of 
simplistic sloganeering deployed most frequently by people who have 
only the most nebulous notion of the tradition on which they so reck-
lessly pass judgment. 
Such political reductionism is all the more seductive in a climate 
where cynicism about the past is taken for an emblem of “sophistica-
tion.” Kathleen Raine’s characterization of the reductionist mentality as 
that frame of mind which “sees in the pearl nothing but the disease of 
the oyster” could hardly find more fitting illustrative material than in 
these ideologically generated “critiques.” To resort to jejune caricatures 
of the culture of the past is also to misunderstand what a tradition is 
all about: all of the great cultural traditions include within themselves 
a variety of viewpoints and value-systems. As Roger Sworder has re-
cently observed, “What one has in a tradition is quite as antinomian 
as establishmentarian.”29 The Western cultural tradition, whatever else 
might be said about it, has been continuously self-critical and often 
aware of the limits of its own ethnocentricism.30
29 R. Sworder, “The Value of the Traditional Disciplines,” Education Monitor, 2:1, 
Spring 1990, p. 27.
30 See S. Hook, “Is Teaching ‘Western Culture’ Racist or Sexist?” p. 15. In a specifically 
the past disowned
167
When one speaks of a cultural tradition one is indeed implying 
certain intellectual, moral, and imaginative continuities rather than a 
random aggregation of disparate bits and pieces. It is for good reason 
that many writers have turned to organic metaphors when trying to 
describe the growth of traditions. However, this by no means implies 
that the tradition is monolithic—in terms of ideology or, indeed, in 
any other terms. 
Secondly, it is not without irony that the values to which the politi-
cal “radicals” so often appeal derive from the tradition which they are 
so intent on dismantling: social justice, intellectual freedom, tolera-
tion of diverse points of view, skepticism, the search for Utopia—these 
are all recurrent motifs in our cultural heritage. These censorious de-
bunkers often seem quite oblivious to the fact that these values have 
been articulated, elaborated, and argued about within the tradition the 
study of which they are intent on replacing with some fashionable as-
semblage of ideologically acceptable and contemporary (“relevant”) 
materials. Many radicals seem to have no notion that the movements 
to which they adhere actually “arose as continuations of or as reactions 
to the cultural environment that spawned them, and can only be fully 
understood when so contextualized.” As John Penwill so neatly put it, 
“No matter how radical the ideology, the past is always already pres-
ent as intertext.”31 The iconoclasts apparently imagine that it is only a 
handful of modern ideologues who can lay claim to positive moral and 
political values. A more brazen impertinence can hardly be imagined. 
They are akin to adolescents who want to pretend that they have no 
parents! 
literary context it is also worth noting the following suggestive remarks, “[L]iterature 
as an institution, understood not as individual works but as the norms governing their 
production and reception, has always possessed its own self-criticism in the form of 
parodistic self-reflexion. The function of parody may be defined as the critique of rep-
resentation of life in literature and as such the immanent self-consciousness of lit-
erature as institution, for parody must necessarily foreground and estrange both the 
forms of production and the norms of reception” (D. Roberts, “Marat/Sade, or the 
Birth of Postmodernism from the Spirit of the Avant-Garde” in A. Milner et al., Post-
modern Conditions, p. 41). This kind of self-criticism, both literary and philosophical, 
can, incidentally, be found in many different traditions—the Indian and the Chinese 
to name two. 
31 J. Penwill, “Editorial,” in H. Oldmeadow, “Mircea Eliade and Carl Jung: ‘Priests 
Without Surplices’?” Studies in Western Traditions Occasional Papers 1, Department of 
Arts, La Trobe University Bendigo, 1995, p. viii.
touchstones of the spirit
168
Thirdly, a good deal of what passes for “political critique” is, in 
fact, vacuous sloganeering. Take “hierarchicalism”: the charge could 
only be obviated if we are willing to say that studying any one thing 
is neither more nor less valuable than studying any other thing—and 
indeed this is the point of view taken in some literature, media, and 
popular culture courses. This kind of anarchism might, at first blush, 
look daring but in the end it is nothing more than an abdication, the 
abandonment of any pedagogical ethic. To believe that no one thing 
is any more or less worth studying than another is to make a mock-
ery of education as such. Any education worth the name should teach 
students to discriminate between the good and the bad, the authentic 
and the spurious, the enriching and the meretricious. By all means let 
us argue strenuously and at length about the kinds of values involved 
in this process, including political ones, but let us not succumb to the 
nonsense that there is no essential difference between Dostoevsky and 
Dallas, or between Kafka and a Kleenex ad. 
In criticizing some of the simple-minded excesses of the politi-
cal critique I do not want to suggest that the charges of elitism, Eu-
rocentricism, sexism are entirely fanciful or ludicrous: they are seri-
ous and have to be addressed. Too often those intent on protecting the 
embattled ideal of a liberal education evade these charges by trivial-
izing them.32 Some of the agenda of the “cultural left” can certainly 
be accommodated within the traditional liberal ideal of education. No 
one, surely, would want to argue against recuperating works which 
have been ignored because they were by women or against recovering 
women’s role in our intellectual and cultural history, against develop-
ing more respectful and open attitudes to other cultural traditions and 
civilizations, against being alert to questions about power relations and 
the political functions of art and of ideas. None of these laudable aims 
impel us to throw our whole cultural tradition onto the garbage dump 
of human history, nor to succumb to a rampant political reduction-
ism so fashionable in some quarters. The contemporary literary crit-
ics whose work I most admire—George Steiner, Raymond Williams, 
Irving Howe, Susan Sontag amongst them—have shown how one can 
both simultaneously respect and incisively interrogate the European 
32 Some of the sillier claims made by “conservatives” such as Bloom, Roger Kimball, 
and others are well exposed in P. Brooks, “Western Civ at Bay,” Times Literary Supple-
ment, January 25, 1991.
the past disowned
169
cultural tradition: such critics certainly do not evade the most pro-
foundly disturbing political questions. Good criticism is often political 
in this sense. However, the wholesale politicization of the teaching of 
the humanities under the aegis of certain social-ideological priorities 
is another matter. To aestheticize or to politicize literary studies is to 
reduce and trivialize them. Recall the ludicrous spectacle of a group of 
French feminists petitioning the Minister of Culture, in the early ’80s, 
to ban Madame Bovary on the grounds of its purported misogyny, a 
move which might have robbed generations of readers of one of the 
most searching and poignant depictions of the social andpsychologi-
cal predicaments of women in the nineteenth century. 
Robert Hughes remarks on the one-dimensional ideological ap-
proach to literature which now holds sway in many universities: 
“Through it one enters a strange, nostalgic, Marxist never-never land, 
where all the most retrograde phantoms of Literature as Instrument of 
Social Utility are trotted forth.” He cites the recent Columbia History of 
the American Novel which pronounces Harriet Beecher Stowe a better 
novelist than Melville 
because she was a woman and “socially constructive,” because Uncle 
Tom’s Cabin helped rouse Americans against slavery . . . whereas the 
captain of the Pequod was a symbol of laissez-faire capitalist indi-
vidualism with a bad attitude to whales.33 
As Hughes so acutely remarks, “one of the first conditions of free-
dom is to discover the line beyond which politics may not go. . . .”34 But 
let us not fall into another snare: to imagine that our cultural traditions 
and the way they are studied somehow transcend political questions. 
As Robin Wood has argued, the judgment of an artistic work must be 
at once “moral, aesthetic, and political, inseparably. . . .”35 This strikes 
me as judicious.
Let us also not fudge another central issue: to insist that literature 
and art and philosophy should always and only be viewed through po-
litical spectacles amounts to a denial of the spiritual which is either 
33 R. Hughes, The Culture of Complaint (London: Harper Collins, 1994), p. 98.
34 R. Hughes, The Culture of Complaint, p. 98.
35 R. Wood, “Creativity & Evaluation: Two Film Noirs of the Fifties,” CineAction!, 21-
22, Summer-Fall 1990, p. 16.
touchstones of the spirit
170
ignored altogether or turned into some kind of epiphenomenon, as if 
most of the greatest works of the past have not been primarily spiri-
tual dramas concerned with the fundamental questions of human ex-
istence. How apposite Coleridge’s warning of nearly two hundred years 
ago seems in the present climate! He reminds us that without elevation 
“above the semblances of custom and the senses to a world of spirit” 
our “organic life is but a state of somnambulism.”36
The contempt for the spiritual characterizes much of both the 
radical political outlook and postmodernist theory. We remember, for 
instance, Barthes disdain for the idea that literature might set out “to 
express the inexpressible”—this Barthes dismisses as a “literature of 
the soul.” Literature’s proper purpose, he asseverates, should be “to un-
express the expressible,” which is to say that it should problematize our 
familiar perceptions and conferrals of meaning.37 Indeed one might 
say that a scorning of the spiritual is a calling-card of the modern out-
look generally, so far have we moved from any kind of normal civiliza-
tion in which, necessarily, “it is the spiritual, not the temporal, which 
culturally, socially, and politically is the criterion of all other values.”38 
(b) Relativism and Postmodernism
The epistemological objections to the liberal ideal of a disinterested 
pursuit of truth are more difficult to counter. However a good deal of 
the confusion will evaporate like morning dew if we recognize a simple 
but important distinction at the outset. Part of the problem is that two 
related but quite separate issues have been conflated. The positivist ru-
bric of “objectivity” is now quite rightly in tatters: Kuhn, Rorty, and 
others have shown how the apparently objective basis of the scientific 
disciplines themselves is illusory (never mind the more absurd preten-
36 It is, he says, “only the elevation of the spirit which affords the sole anchorage in 
the storm, and at the same time the substantiating principle of all true wisdom, the 
satisfactory solution of all the contradictions of human nature, of the whole riddle of 
the world. This alone belongs to and speaks intelligibly to all alike, the learned and the 
ignorant, if but the heart listens” (The Friend [1818], quoted in R. Williams, Culture 
and Society, p. 83).
37 See J. Culler, Barthes (Glasgow: Fontana, 1983), p. 47. 
38 F. Schuon, “Usurpations of Religious Feeling,” Studies in Comparative Religion, 2:2, 
1968, p. 66.
the past disowned
171
sions of a positivist sociology or a behaviorist psychology).39 However, 
this and the ideal of a disinterested pursuit of knowledge are two quite 
different matters.
As a recent American commentator has written:
It is one of the clearest symptoms of the decadence of the academy 
that ideals that once informed the humanities have been corrupt-
ed, willfully misunderstood, or simply ignored by the new soph-
istries that have triumphed on our campuses. We know something 
is gravely amiss when teachers of the humanities confess—or, as is 
more often the case, when they boast—that they are no longer able to 
distinguish between truth and falsity. We know something is wrong 
when scholars assure us—and their pupils—that there is no essential 
difference between the disinterested pursuit of knowledge and par-
tisan proselytizing, or when academic literary critics abandon the 
effort to identify and elucidate works of lasting achievement as a re-
actionary enterprise unworthy of their calling. And indeed, the most 
troubling development of all is that such contentions are no longer 
the exceptional pronouncements of a radical elite, but have increas-
ingly become the conventional wisdom in humanities departments 
of our major colleges and universities.40 
 
The assassination of the very idea of truth and falsity can probably 
be traced back to Nietzsche but Messieurs Derrida, Foucault, Barthes, 
Lyotard, and Baudrillard have been his enthusiastic latter-day accom-
plices. Indeed, the very idea of knowledge itself has been seen in some 
quarters as nothing more than “a persistent self-delusion.” Foucault’s 
The Study of Things, one of his admirers tells us, “proclaims the eclipse 
of man as a ground of thought.”41
At this juncture it is perhaps worth floating a few general remarks 
about the current vogue for the “postmodernist” theorists. (For our 
present purposes it is unnecessary to make fastidious discriminations 
between “deconstructionists,” “postmodernists,” “semioticians,” and 
39 See T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago 
Press, 1970), and R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton 
University Press, 1979).
40 R. Kimball, Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education 
(1990), quoted in J. Searle, “The Storm Over the University,” p. 37.
41 J.G. Merquior, Foucault (London: Fontana, 1985), p. 55.
touchstones of the spirit
172
“post-structuralists,” nor to concern ourselves with distinguishing 
various materialist, psychoanalytical, and feminist permutations.) Per-
haps deconstructionism is so popular amongst intellectuals because 
it places a premium on cleverness, on mental facility and agility, on a 
kind of mental dexterity that allows all manner of captivating sleights-
of-hand. Cleverness yes, but intelligence? Certainly one searches in 
vain for any kind of contemplative intelligence which, in Seyyed Hos-
sein Nasr’s words, “differs as much from mental virtuosity as the soar-
ing flight of an eagle differs from the play of a monkey.”42 Paris post-’68 
is, whatever else might be said of it, not a milieu conducive to contem-
plative intelligence of any kind!
Postmodernist theory demands nothing in terms of a commit-
ment to any particular set of values or beliefs: it is avowedly amoral. 
No one should be deceived by the fact that it is apparently most conge-
nial to “radicals” who are attracted by the postmodernist repudiation 
of both tradition and modernism. Certainly it seems to provide some 
sort of haven for leftist intellectuals disenchanted by recent events in 
Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and China. The apparent radicalism 
of postmodern theory is in fact somewhat illusory: much postmod-
ernist theorizing amounts toriety of names (Baiame, Bunjil, Daramulan, Nurelli, Mangela) and is 
anthropomorphic, masculine, creative, sky-dwelling, ethical, immu-
table, and eternal, existing before all things and paternally related to 
all of humankind—perhaps best translated in English as the “All-Fa-
ther.” Indeed, the belief in the divinity who created both man and the 
world and then ascended into heaven after bestowing on humankind 
the rudiments of culture, “is attested in many other archaic cultures.”30 
The same kind of transcendent, world-creative power is portrayed in 
some tribes, particularly those of Northern Australia, as feminine—
the “All-Mother.”31 Between the supreme being and more parochial 
and so-called “totemic” spirits and powers are supernatural beings, 
“sky heroes,” with whom much of the mythology is concerned. The 
Rainbow Serpent, representing the generative force, is one of the most 
widespread of such figures.32 
As to the Aboriginal relationship with the natural world, what Jo-
seph Epes Brown has said of the American Indians is also, in large 
measure, true of the Australian Aborigines:
[T]he world of nature itself was their temple, and within this sanctu-
ary they showed great respect to every form, function, and power. 
That the Indians held as sacred all the natural forms around them is 
that will have arisen by applying those principles to contingent needs. . .” (M. Pallis, 
The Way and the Mountain [London: Peter Owen, 1960], p. 203).
30 M. Eliade, Australian Religions, p. 7. The early ethnologists, especially those of an 
evolutionist bent, were unable to grasp the possibility of any religious conception 
amongst the Aborigines which might be comparable to the belief in a supreme, benev-
olent, and ethical Deity such as was to be found in the great Occidental monotheisms; 
it ran counter to their assumptions about the intellectual and spiritual inferiority of the 
Aborigines. Nevertheless, as Eliade has remarked, “There is no doubt that the belief in 
such a celestial Supreme Being belongs among the most archaic and genuine traditions 
of the southeastern Aborigines.” The ethnologists likewise had difficulty in coming to 
terms with Aboriginal notions about the pre-existent and eternal soul in which most 
tribes believed. Again, Eliade has emphasized that “the indestructibility of the human 
spirit seems to be a fundamental and pan-Australian conception” (p. 172). 
31 K. Maddock, “World Creative Powers,” pp. 88-92.
32 M. Eliade, Australian Religions, pp. 79ff. 
touchstones of the spirit
14
not unique. . . . But what is almost unique in the Indians’ attitude is 
that their reverence for nature and for life is central to their religion: 
each form in the world around them bears such a host of precise 
values and meanings that taken all together they constitute what one 
would call their “doctrine.”33
It is not too much to say that for the Aborigines, as for the Indians, 
not only is nature their temple but also their Scripture. In the case of 
the Aborigines we have already seen how a mythic and sacred geogra-
phy is derived from the Dreaming itself. Indeed, “in the end, the land 
is no more than a bridge between [them] and the sacred realm of the 
Dreaming.”34 Much of their sacred art was directed towards the pres-
ervation of the tribal knowledge of that mythic geography. It is also 
worth remembering a point frequently stressed by Eliade: for homo 
religiosus, who is also necessarily homo symbolicus, everything in na-
ture is capable of revealing itself as a “cosmic sacrality,” as a hierophany, 
in contrast to the profane outlook of modern man, an outlook which 
renders the universe “opaque, inert, mute,” a swirling chaos of dead 
matter.35 
The Aborigines’ semi-nomadic lifestyle ensured that they re-
mained immersed in the realm of nature. It is as well to remember 
that such a relationship, of itself, confers spiritual gifts. As Schuon so 
eloquently puts it,
Virgin Nature is at one with holy poverty and also with spiritual 
childlikeness; she is an open book containing an inexhaustible 
teaching of truth and beauty. It is in the midst of his own artifices 
that man most easily becomes corrupted, it is they that make him 
covetous and impious; close to virgin Nature, who knows neither 
agitation nor falsehood, he has the hope of remaining contemplative 
like Nature herself.36
Elsewhere he reminds us that in our own time “the timeless message of 
33 J.E. Brown, The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian (New York: Crossroad, 
1972), p. 37.
34 J. Cowan, “The Dream Journey: Ritual Renewal among Australian Aborigines,” 
Temenos, 7, 1986, p. 181.
35 M. Eliade, Sacred and the Profane, pp. 12, 178.
36 F. Schuon, Feathered Sun, p. 41.
“melodies from the beyond”
15
Nature constitutes a spiritual viaticum of the first importance.”37 
Aboriginal ritual life was largely given over to a re-entry into the 
illud tempus of the Dreaming, a time which is sacred
because it [is] sanctified by the real presence and activity of the 
Supernatural Beings. But like all other species of “sacred time,” al-
though infinitely remote, it is not inaccessible. It can be reactualized 
through ritual.38
Through ritual life the members of the tribe not only recuperated sa-
cred time but by reiterating the paradigmatic acts of the supernatural 
powers they helped to regenerate life by “recreating the world.”39 To 
neglect these awesome cosmic responsibilities would be to allow the 
world to regress into darkness and chaos. Indeed, here we have one 
of the keys to the demoralization of those survivors who must live in 
a world made meaningless by their separation from the land and the 
consequent annihilation of their ritual life. They are no longer able 
to participate in the Dreamtime nor to fulfill those ritual obligations 
which gave life dignity and purpose. The substitutes and palliatives the 
modern white world offers are, of course, tawdry and trivial in com-
parison, whether they be sinister, as in the case of alcohol, or com-
paratively benign and well-intentioned—a Western “education” for 
instance, or “proper housing.”
The spiritual integrity of the Aboriginal tradition was preserved 
by individuals variously called karadjis, “medicine men,” “clever men,” 
or, in Elkin’s terms, “men of high degree.” It was their role to cure the 
sick, defend the community against “black” magic, perform vital func-
tions in the communal ritual life, especially in initiation rituals, and 
to serve as cultural and spiritual exemplars by way of their access to 
occult powers and their custody of the mythological and ceremonial 
heritage. These men were viaducts, so to speak, between the super-
natural and mundane worlds.40 The initiation ceremonies (invariably 
37 F. Schuon, Feathered Sun, p. 13.
38 M. Eliade, Australian Religions, p. 43.
39 M. Eliade, Australian Religions, p. 61. 
40 See M. Eliade, Australian Religions, pp. 128ff, 156ff; A. P. Elkin, Aboriginal Men of 
High Degree (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1977); and J. Cowan, The Ele-
ments of the Aborigine Tradition (Shaftesbury: Element Books, 1992), Ch. 6.
touchstones of the spirit
16
entailing a death and rebirth experience), the central role of visions 
and other ecstatic experiences, and the healing functions of the men 
of high degree are reminiscent of shamanic practices in Tibet, Siberia, 
and amongst the Indians of both North and South America.41 Never-
theless, the Aboriginal tradition developed its own esoteric spiritual 
practices and metaphysical wisdom to which the medicine men con-
formed themselves and by which they were sanctified.42 We should 
also note that in recent decades the “secret business” of women, their 
role in ceremonial life and in esoteric religious practices, has become 
more widely appreciated in the non-Aboriginal world.
The Marks of Tradition
Aboriginal culture exhibited four emblems of all religious traditions. 
Firstly, a divine source. As we have seen, the origins of this traditionno truth as if this were truth or in declaring it to be absolutely true 
that there is nothing but the relatively true; one might as well say that 
there is no language or write that there is no writing.51 
 
The ironic stance, so characteristic of postmodernist writing, be-
comes a kind of refuge. A “playful” detachment and an apparent “mor-
al neutrality” become a cover for moral nihilism (and, it might be said, 
for a political impotence, though this issue is rather more perplexing). 
It is no accident that postmodernist self-definitions are almost entirely 
negative. The Parisian pontificators are, veritably, the monks of nega-
tion! It has been observed that postmodernist critics
are against tradition for it is an oppressive authority, they are equally 
against modernism for it “has sold out to the arts of the museum.” 
And whenever interpreters venture any further and try to establish 
positive principles by which to identify the postmodernist art work 
50 G. Steiner, “To Civilize Our Gentlemen” in Language and Silence: Essays 1958-1966 
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), pp. 89-90.
51 F. Schuon, Logic and Transcendence: A New Translation with Selected Letters 
(Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2009), p. 6.
touchstones of the spirit
176
and distinguish it from what is not postmodernist, they invariably 
end up empty-handed.52 
The same can be said of postmodernist theory. Insofar as all this im-
pinges on the debate about education what we are inevitably left with 
(sooner rather than later) is a situation in which there is not only no 
agreement about what constitutes an educated human person but one 
in which there is not even an intelligible debate centering on compet-
ing visions of such an ideal.53 It is simply erased from the agenda.
Perhaps the most conspicuous impact of postmodernist theory in 
literature studies is the displacement of the artist, and to some extent, 
the eclipse of the very idea of art if by that term we imply a made ob-
ject which intentionally proclaims a coherent and meaningful vision of 
life. The theorist now usurps the artist: theory takes priority over art. 
The study of the novel, for example, is largely replaced by the study of 
“novel theory” or by one of its sub-genres such as “narratology.” The 
novel itself becomes little more than a platform from which to con-
struct a theoretical edifice. Interpretation, freed from the demands 
of a hermeneutic which focuses on authorial intention, does indeed 
become, as Foucault insists, an “infinite task,”54 or, in Agnes Heller’s 
phrase, “a boundless pluralism.”55 Such theory subverts any and every 
hermeneutic and in any particular work meaning is obscured, perhaps 
obliterated, by the preoccupation with certain formal and discursive 
properties.56 This kind of thinking and its implications needs to be ex-
amined much more critically if it is to be resisted. As Rita Felski has 
recently written:
[T]he idea that the formal properties of the literary text negate, tran-
scend, deconstruct, or otherwise problematize its substantive con-
tent is revealed as the product of the modern understanding of art 
and needs as such to be critically examined in relation to the ideo-
52 F. Feher, “The Pyrrhic Victory of Art in its War of Liberation: Remarks on the Post-
modernist Intermezzo” in A. Milner et al., Postmodernist Conditions, p. 85.
53 See A. Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, p. 337.
54 Per J.G. Merquior, Foucault, p. 74.
55 See A. Heller, “Existentialism, Alienation, Postmodernism,” p. 7.
56 One thinks, for instance, of a recent article about Wuthering Heights devoted en-
tirely to the place in the text of the letter h.
the past disowned
177
logical function which it serves. Thus entire academic industries are 
based upon the exegesis of the experimental literary or artistic text, 
which acquire an enigmatic aura, that can only be deciphered by the 
expert: “in a way analogous to religion, the work of art alludes mys-
teriously to a superior but now essentially opaque and unknowable 
order.”57 
As Berry has observed, in this kind of climate, the study of litera-
ture
ceases to be a meeting ground of all readers of a common tongue and 
becomes only the occasion of a deafening clatter about literature. 
Teachers and students read the great songs and stories to learn about 
them, not from them. The texts are tracked as by the passing of an 
army of ants, but the power of songs and stories to affect life is still 
little acknowledged, apparently because it is little felt.58 
 
Another bizarre sign of the times is the spectacle of some novelists 
now clearly no longer writing for any kind of public audience but only 
for the critics.59 Witness too some of the more absurd and symptom-
atic contentions recently made in defense of “Helen Demidenko.” One 
might observe in passing that the so-called Demidenko affair revealed 
nothing if not the frivolity, trendiness, and moral and political bank-
ruptcy of much of the Australian literary establishment—although we 
hardly needed this particular fiasco to make that plain.60 
57 R. Felski, “Feminism, Realism and the Avant-Garde,” p. 62. The internal quote is 
from B. McBurney, “The Postmodernist Transvaluation of Modernist Values,” Thesis 
Eleven, 12, 1985.
58 W. Berry, “The Loss of the University” in Home Economics: Fourteen Essays (San 
Francisco: North Point Press, 1987), p. 79. 
59 See Gore Vidal’s essay “American Plastic: The Matter of Fiction” in Matters of Fact 
and of Fiction, pp. 99-126.
60 In 1994 Helen Demidenko received the Miles Franklin Prize, Australia’s most pres-
tigious literary award for The Hand that Signed the Paper, a novel apparently based on 
her own family’s experiences of Stalinist purges in the Ukraine. After the awarding 
of the prize and the accompanying critical fanfare, the Ukrainian identity of “Helen 
Demidenko” and the experiences on which the novel was ostensibly based were ex-
posed as fraudulent. Robert Manne and others also denounced the poisonous anti-
Semitism of the novel, something which had apparently escaped the attention of crit-
touchstones of the spirit
178
The Proper Place of the Humanities and Our Attitude to the Past
Before concluding let me briefly affirm what I take to be the primary 
functions of the humanities. Let me firstly admit that I see no realis-
tic alternative to the “Great Books” approach in the study of the hu-
manities, most decisively in the study of literature. One can profitably 
argue about the canon, interrogate it, change it, enlarge it, revise it. 
No serious critic of literature has ever supposed the canon to be fixed, 
inscribed on a tablet of gold, inviolate and static for all time.61 Such a 
notion is simply a straw-man set up by those wishing to disable hu-
manistic approaches to the study of literature. But to reject the very 
idea of the canon is to cut oneself off from the treasury of the past and 
to live only by the fashionable dictates of an impoverished present. 
It is one of the glories of the human condition that we can make 
of ourselves what we will. In one sense we are what we believe our-
selves to be. One of the invaluable and irreplaceable functions of the 
humane disciplines was to expose the student to various images of the 
human condition, images and metaphors which spoke both to our an-
cestors and to ourselves across the barriers of time and space.62 Such 
study taught students to understand the profound language of image, 
symbol, and myth, those imaginative, non-mechanistic, and qualita-
tive modes of experience and understanding before which the modern 
mentality so often stands baffled. It is still possible to hear the voices 
of Homer or Meister Eckhart or William Blake, or indeed, if we are 
prepared to make the necessary effort, of Lao Tzu and Black Elk or the 
sages who composed The Upanishads. The problem is not that they 
have nothing to say to us: nothing could be more childish, more im-
pudent than such a belief. Nor, whateverare primordial, stretching back into time immemorial. We cannot an-
chor its origins in historical time nor tie it to any place, person, event, 
or book. Nonetheless, we can declare that this mythological-ritual 
complex was not and could not have been of merely human prove-
nance though doubtless its spiritual economy providentially reflected 
the psychic receptivities of the Aboriginal peoples. As Schuon has af-
firmed, “Traditions emerge from the Infinite like flowers; they can no 
more be fabricated than can the sacred art which is their witness and 
their proof.”43
Secondly the Aboriginal tradition enshrined a doctrine about the 
nature and “relationship” of the Absolute and the relative, the Real and 
the relatively or provisionally real. In the case of the Aborigines, as 
with the American Indians, the doctrines were not cast in the mold 
of a book or a collection of canonical writings, nor formulated in ab-
stract dogmatic language but, rather, inhered in the relationship of the 
Aboriginal to the whole cosmos. As Schuon remarked, metaphysical 
doctrines do not of necessity find their expression only in verbal forms 
but can be expressed visually and ritually. Furthermore, 
41 See M. Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (New York: Pantheon 
Books, 1964), and Australian Religions, pp. 128-164, and A. P. Elkin, Aboriginal Men of 
High Degree, pp. 57-58, 60-64.
42 See J. Cowan, Mysteries of the Dreaming: The Spiritual Life of Australian Aborigines 
(Bridport: Prism Press, 1989), Ch. 1.
43 F. Schuon, Treasures of Buddhism (Bangalore: Select Books, 1993), p. 8. 
“melodies from the beyond”
17
[T]he criterion of metaphysical truth or of its depth lies, not in the 
complexity or difficulty of its expression, but in the quality and ef-
fectiveness of its symbolism, allowing for a particular capacity of un-
derstanding or style of thinking. Wisdom does not lie in any compli-
cation of words but in the profundity of the intention. . . .44
The doctrine of the Aborigines is ingrained in their mythology, 
ritual life, and sacred art, each of these dimensions of Aboriginal cul-
ture hinging, so to speak, on a sacramental relationship with the land 
itself; their sense of the sacred expresses itself most readily in spatial 
rather than temporal terms. A failure to understand this principle lies 
behind the evident anthropological incomprehension in the face of the 
Dreaming, a category of the sacred which escapes completely the grip 
of all profane and linear notions of time, not to say of “history.”
The third mark of any integral tradition, inseparable from the 
doctrine, is a spiritual method, a way which enables its practitioners 
to cleave to the Absolute, to conform their being to the demands of 
Eternity. Aboriginal spirituality was expressed primarily through rites 
and ceremonies. Indeed, one commentator has remarked that there 
can have been few cultures so dominated by ritual life.45 Contrary to 
anthropologists’ claims about the social “functions” of these rituals 
the crucial purpose of ceremonial life was to put both the tribe and 
the individual into right relationship with the Dreaming and with the 
natural world, the material vestment in which the Eternal was clothed. 
Fourthly we find the formal embodiment of tradition in the sacred 
arts and sciences which determine the character of a civilization and 
which give it its own spiritual “personality,” if one might so express it. 
Here we need look no further than Aboriginal art: far from being the 
“childish scratchings” of “ignorant savages” this art constitutes a rich 
symbolic vocabulary, always rooted in the natural order but compris-
ing a vehicle for the most complex metaphysical ideas and the most 
resonant spiritual messages. Here we find an art that conforms to 
Schuon’s claim that,
Traditional art derives from a creativity which combines heavenly 
inspiration with ethnic genius, and which does so in the manner of a 
44 F. Schuon, Understanding Islam (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom Books, 1998), 
p. 133. 
45 J. Cowan, Aborigine Tradition, p. 53.
touchstones of the spirit
18
science endowed with rules and not by way of individual improvisa-
tion: ars sine scientia nihil.46
Aboriginal art assumed many different forms: sand sculptures, 
rock wall art, body painting and decoration, ritual objects, and, in later 
times, bark paintings. Many of these incorporated pictorial designs 
and all were symbolic, not in the superficial modern sense whereby a 
symbol “stands in” for something else, more or less arbitrarily, but in 
the traditional sense which was re-articulated by Coleridge:
A symbol is characterized . . . above all by the translucence of the 
Eternal through and in the Temporal. It always partakes of the Real-
ity which it renders intelligible; and while it enunciates the whole, 
abides itself as a living part in that Unity of which it is the represen-
tative.47 
Traditional art is never arbitrary nor subjective but informed by a 
language which rests on the analogies between spiritual realities and 
transitory material phenomena which, by way of this relationship, 
carry qualitative symbolic significances. It is in this context that we 
must understand the indifference of Aboriginal art to the claims of 
a naturalistic aesthetic which seeks to “imitate” nature, to accurately 
reproduce the surfaces and appearances of the material world from the 
viewpoint of the human spectator. As Schuon so often insisted, artistic 
naturalism proceeds from an exteriorizing and materialistic mentality 
which could not be normative in any traditional civilization. 
Aboriginal art conveyed transcendental values and metaphysical 
truths to the social collectivity. By-passing the pitfalls of abstract and 
merely ratiocinative thought it was accessible to all mentalities and 
through its symbolism addressed the whole person rather than the 
mind only, thereby actualizing the teachings of tradition. The contrast 
with our own modern art could hardly be more dramatic, confronted 
as we so often are by an “art” which is boastfully anti-traditional, fu-
elled by a rampant individualism and an insatiable appetite for novelty, 
46 F. Schuon, Art from the Sacred to the Profane: East and West, ed. C. Schuon (Bloom-
ington, IN: World Wisdom, 2007), p. 5.
47 Coleridge quoted in A. Snodgrass, Time, Architecture and Eternity: The Stellar and 
Temporal Symbolism of Traditional Buildings, Vol. 1 (New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 
1990), p. 44.
“melodies from the beyond”
19
preoccupied with an aestheticism attuned to the fashions of the day, 
directed towards little more than the stimulation of the senses, and 
quite indifferent to any spiritual function, an art characterized by sty-
listic excesses veering from a pedantic naturalism on one side to the 
grotesqueries of an inhuman surrealism on the other. Aboriginal art 
which retains even some of its traditional character is like a mountain 
stream in contrast to the cesspit of much modern art. 
It is true that in recent years Aboriginal art has been afforded a 
new respect and a rather fashionable status within both the Australian 
and the international art establishment. Unhappily this new attitude 
is often informed by altogether anti-traditional values whereby Ab-
original art is seen primarily in terms of aesthetically pleasing “craft” 
objects which are expressions of the material culture of the Aborigines. 
As one commentator has recently observed, “Australian Aboriginal art 
remains the last great non-European cultural form available to the vo-
racious appetite of the European art machine.”48 A sacred art resonant 
with symbolic and spiritual messages is thus wrenched out of its cer-
emonial context, is culturally appropriated, and eventually becomes an 
art commodity on which the art market fixes a monetary value. Again, 
a familiar story in many parts of the globe.49 
The Lessons of Aboriginal Tradition
The Aboriginal tradition enshrined a sense of proportionand an or-
dered scheme of values and priorities which gave precedence to the 
spiritual, which stamped everyday life with a sense of the imperish-
able, and which afforded humankind an ontological dignity all but im-
possible to recover in a world which is prepared to countenance talk of 
the human being as a “trousered ape.” In our own culture, swayed by 
the sentimental prejudices of the age and dedicated to the pursuit of a 
selfish and barbarous “progress,” Aboriginal culture can stand as a re-
minder of those human possibilities on which we have so often turned 
our backs. It can remind us anew that we live, in the fullest sense, only 
in relation to the Absolute. 
In a culture tyrannized by time and imprisoned in historicism, 
the Aboriginal indifference to profane history can provide us with an-
other perspective on our earthly existence. The messages implicit in 
48 T. Smith, “Black Art: Its Genius Explained,” The Independent Monthly, September 
1989, p. 18.
49 See J.E. Brown, Spiritual Legacy of the American Indians, p. 134. 
touchstones of the spirit
20
Aboriginal culture can, of course, have no meaning for those whose 
materialistic worldview banishes anything and everything of a spiri-
tual order. As Eliade has remarked, many students of archaic religions 
ultimately “take refuge in a materialism or behaviorism impervious to 
every spiritual shock.”50 
Anyone not in the grip of preconceptions of this kind cannot study 
Aboriginal religion without being continually reawakened to a sense of 
the sacred. If we are to ask what precisely constitutes the “sacred” we 
can do no better than turn again to Schuon. That is sacred, he writes,
which in the first place is attached to the transcendent order, second-
ly, possesses the character of absolute certainty, and, thirdly, eludes 
the comprehension and control of the ordinary human mind. . . . 
The sacred introduces a quality of the absolute into relativities and 
confers on perishable things a texture of eternity.51
To reanimate such a sense is one of the most invaluable services 
which cultures such as that of the Australian Aborigines might per-
form for the contemporary world. Without a sense of the sacred we are 
lost in the world of accidental contingencies. As Schuon again reminds 
us,
civilization only represents a value provided it is supra-human in 
origin and implies for the “civilized” man a sense of the sacred. . . . A 
sense of the sacred is fundamental for every civilization because fun-
damental for man; the sacred—that which is immutable, inviolable, 
and thus infinitely majestic—is in the very substance of our spirit 
and of our existence.52
It is not without some irony that it is the so-called “primitive,” quite 
free from any complicity in the pathologies of modernity, who recalls 
us to this sense of the sacred. 
50 M. Eliade, The Quest: Meaning and History in Religion (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1969), p. 62. See also p. 36.
51 F. Schuon, Understanding Islam, p. 45.
52 F. Schuon, Understanding Islam, p. 26. Elsewhere Schuon writes, “It is one of the 
most pernicious of errors to believe that the human collectivity, on the one hand, or 
its well-being, on the other, represents an unconditional or absolute value and thus an 
end in itself ” (Light on the Ancient Worlds, p. 32). 
“melodies from the beyond”
21
Aboriginal society was one in harmony with nature rather than 
one intent on conquest and plunder; the millennia during which the 
Aborigines lived alone on the continent left it in a more or less primor-
dial state of Edenic innocence, if one might so express it. As Schuon 
has remarked of the American Indians, if there is an element of ineluc-
table fatality in the disappearance of this paradise, this in no wise ex-
cuses the villainies to which the Aborigines have been subjected over 
the last two centuries.53 
The Aborigines found in the world about them not only beauty 
and harmony but signs of divine intent to which men could and should 
conform themselves. This lies at the heart of their relationship to the 
land. One of the many lessons we can learn is that a properly-constitut-
ed ecological awareness can only be built on the foundations of what is 
ultimately a spiritual recognition of the holiness of the world around us: 
furthermore, this sacredness is conferred by the immaterial and spiri-
tual realities which the world of nature reflects. At the same time we 
can say that Aboriginal religion was life-affirming in the most down-
to-earth fashion, or, to put it another way, for the Aboriginal outlook 
the sacred was always materially incarnated in the realm of nature. 
No amount of fashionable concern about the evils of pollution, 
no amount of “socially responsible” science, nor of the idolization of 
“Nature” can in any way substitute for the spiritual intuition which lies 
at the heart of many primal cultures. For modern man,
It is not a question of projecting a supersaturated and disillusioned 
individualism into a desecrated Nature—this would be a worldliness 
like any other—but, on the contrary, of rediscovering in Nature, on 
the basis of the traditional outlook, the divine substance which is 
inherent in it; in other words, to “see God everywhere”. . . .54
Of course, the sacredness of the world is necessarily inaccessible to 
a view which sees the planet as nothing more than a configuration 
of physical properties, processes, and energies, and “knowledge” as a 
quantitative accumulation of data about these material phenomena. 
The symbolist outlook, exemplified by the Aborigines, eludes the grasp 
of “Single Vision” in absolute fashion.55
53 See F. Schuon, Feathered Sun, pp. 41-43.
54 F. Schuon, Feathered Sun, p. 13.
55 See F. Schuon, “The Symbolist Mind” in Feathered Sun, pp. 3-13. “Single Vision”—
touchstones of the spirit
22
Aboriginal man also offers us an exemplum of spiritual responsibil-
ity and authenticity. As Mircea Eliade has observed,
[I]t would be wrong to believe that the religious man of primitive 
and archaic societies refuses to assume the responsibility for a genu-
ine existence. On the contrary . . . he courageously assumes immense 
responsibilities—for example, that of collaborating in the creation of 
the cosmos, or of creating his own world, or of ensuring the life of 
plants and animals, and so on. But it is a different kind of responsi-
bility from those that, to us moderns, appear to be the only genuine 
and valid responsibilities. It is a responsibility on the cosmic plane, 
in contradistinction to the moral, social, or historical responsibilities 
that are alone regarded as valid in modern civilizations. From the 
point of view of profane existence, man feels no responsibility except 
to himself and to society. . . .56
 
In his commanding study of the crisis of modern civilization, The 
Reign of Quantity, René Guénon refers to
the darkest enigmas of the modern world, enigmas which that world 
itself denies because though it carries them in itself it is incapable of 
perceiving them, and because this denial is an indispensable condi-
tion for the maintenance of the special mentality whereby it exists.57
Those enigmas can only be unraveled by recourse to the wisdom 
which existed within the cadre of all integral traditions, including that 
of Australia’s indigenous people. As Schuon reminds us, no people 
anywhere has been bereft of a religious tradition animated by spiritual 
insights and values. It is only we moderns who have invented a godless 
and spiritless world, a desacralized universe. The ultimately important 
lessons of any traditional culture do not invite any kind of “imitation,” 
which would be quite fruitless, but a return to the sources of the pe-
rennial wisdom which can always be found within our own religious 
tradition if only we have the will to look. 
William Blake’s characterization of the scientistic mentality.
56 M. Eliade, Sacred and the Profane, p. 93.
57 R. Guénon, Reign of Quantity, p. 11.23
chapter 2 
Metaphysics: East and West 
The possession of all the sciences, if unaccompanied by the knowl-
edge of the best, will more often than not injure the possessor.
Plato1
European philosophers have been guilty of the insularity which afflicts 
so many of their counterparts in other disciplines. Many studies pur-
porting to give us a history of philosophical thought or some kind of 
conspectus of philosophical trends within a given period still assume 
that “philosophy” and “Western philosophy” are synonymous. Eastern 
philosophical thought is all too often ignored, marginalized, or treated 
as kind of fumbling proto-philosophy, hopelessly mired in religious 
superstition. As Wilhelm Halbfass has demonstrated, the dominant 
trend in Western histories of philosophy has been to disqualify the 
Orientals altogether. Early exceptions, such as can be found in the 
works of the German Sanskritist Paul Deussen and the Russian orien-
talist Theodore Stcherbatsky, only confirm the rule. Here is a charac-
teristic nineteenth century formulation:
Ancient philosophy is essentially Greek philosophy. . . . That which 
the mind of other peoples and especially the Orient has aspired to in 
a related direction has remained more or less at the stage of prime-
val phantasies of the peoples. Everywhere, they lack the freedom of 
thought and the concomitant nobility of thought which tolerates the 
thralldom of myth for only a certain length of time and only in the 
infant stage of experience and thought.2 
These days philosophers might be more cautious in expressing 
such barefaced judgments, but the attitudes and values informing this 
cultural myopia remain alive and well amongst Western intellectuals. 
1 Plato quoted in W. Perry (ed.), A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom (London: Allen & 
Unwin, 1971), p. 731. 
2 E. Dühring quoted in W. Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Philosophical Un-
derstanding (Delhi: Motilal Barnarsidass, 1990), p. 153. 
touchstones of the spirit
24
Rationalist, positivist, materialist, and pragmatic philosophers have 
generally, insofar as Eastern thought comes within their purview at 
all, adopted an altogether predictable and somewhat condescending 
stance, reserving their meager approbations for those aspects of East-
ern philosophy which are seen to be “rational,” “humanistic,” “empiri-
cal,” and the like. Other influential modern philosophical movements, 
such as logical positivism and other schools in the analytic movement, 
have retreated into a rarefied and highly technical domain which has 
little connection with philosophy’s traditional purpose, the study and 
pursuit of wisdom; indeed, they may be considered as proponents of 
“misosophy”—a hatred of wisdom.3 They have also taken for granted 
that mysticism is necessarily antithetical to rationality and have thus 
thrown the Eastern traditions out of the court of philosophy.4 One 
might also note in passing that African influences on the Western tra-
dition are generally subsumed under the rubric of “Greek philosophy” 
(as if Hypatia, Augustine, Origen, Cyril, and Tertullian were surrogate 
Greeks—a point made by the African philosopher Innocent Onyewue-
nyi.5) 
But the picture is not completely bleak. Over the past two centu-
ries there have been some creative philosophical engagements with the 
thought of the East, and some self-critical recognition of the intellec-
tual parochialism of much Western thought. Although European Ori-
entalism has remained, to a large extent, locked in the historico-philo-
logical scholarship of the nineteenth century, since the Second World 
War it is no longer unusual to find Anglophone philosophers teaching 
comparative philosophy—one may mention such names as Charles 
Moore (the moving force behind the East-West Philosophers’ Confer-
ences in Hawaii), Dale Riepe, Arthur Danto, Charles Hartshorne, Rob-
ert Nozick, Ninian Smart, and Eliot Deutsch as well as Asian scholars 
who have worked in Western universities—Chang Chung-yuan, Gar-
ma Chang, J.N. Mohanty, J.L. Mehta, Arvind Sharma, Purushottama 
Bilimoria, to name a few.6 
3 See S.H. Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred (New York: Crossroad, 1981), p. 43. See 
also I. Watson, “The Anti-Wisdom of Modern Philosophy,” Studies in Comparative 
Religion, 6:4, Autumn 1972, pp. 221-224.
4 See R. King, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and ‘The Mystic 
East’ (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 28-34.
5 R. King, Orientalism and Religion, p. 29.
6 See W. Halbfass, India and Europe, pp. 162-163.
metaphysics: east and west
25
Over the past fifty years the academic field of comparative philoso-
phy has emerged as one of the intellectual sites where the East-West 
encounter has produced some interesting results. Certainly the pros-
pects have improved considerably since 1964 when Thomas Merton 
wrote,
There have of course been spurious attempts to bring East and West 
together. One need not review all the infatuated theosophies of the 
nineteenth century. Nor need one bother to criticize the laughable 
syncretisms which have occupied the talents of publicists (more of-
ten Eastern than Western) in which Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, Tol-
stoy, Marx, Nietzsche, and anyone else you like join in the cosmic 
dance which turns out to be not Shiva’s but just anybody’s. How-
ever, the comparison of Eastern and Western philosophy is, in our 
time, reaching a certain level of seriousness and this is one small and 
hopeful sign. The materials for a synthesis of science and wisdom 
are not lacking.7 
Tokens of this development include the East-West Philosophers’ 
Conferences in Hawaii and the appearance of journals such as Phi-
losophy East and West, and more recently, Asian Philosophy. Since the 
’70s there has also been a steady output of scholarly monographs in 
this field. A representative sample: Chris Gudmunsen’s Wittgenstein 
and Buddhism (1977), Masao Abe’s Zen and Western Thought (1985), 
Harold Coward’s Derrida and Indian Philosophy (1990), and compila-
tions such as Heidegger and Asian Thought and Nietzsche and Asian 
Thought, both edited by Graham Parkes, and Buddhism and Western 
Philosophy (1981), edited by Nathan Katz. In such books and in the 
dozens of disciplinary journals carrying the work of comparative phi-
losophers and religionists one nowadays comes across any number 
of articles drawing connections and comparisons between the philo-
sophical ideas, schools, and movements of East and West: here Nagar-
juna is compared to Kant, there Shankara to Eckhart, and over there is 
an inquiry into the relation between Hume’s thought and Buddhism, 
or perhaps a comparison of the Buddha’s teaching of dukkha and Ki-
erkegaard’s angst.8 Such comparative philosophy also encompasses 
7 T. Merton (ed.), Gandhi on Non-Violence: A Selection from the Writings of Mahatma 
Gandhi (New York: New Directions, 1963), p. 3.
8 Some of the parallels and comparisons have become commonplace: Confucius: 
touchstones of the spirit
26
the impact on Eastern thought of Western philosophers. Scholars like 
Graham Parkes, for example, have traced the post-war Japanese and 
Chinese enthusiasm for both Nietzsche and Heidegger.9 Less common 
is the analysis and evaluation of Western philosophical constructs in 
traditional Eastern terms. One of the salutary results of this kind of 
inquiry is to administer some shock-therapy to the over-valuation of a 
misperceived “originality” of this or that Western thinker: any scholar 
thoroughly familiar with Nagarjuna will be less likely to be seduced by 
claims along the lines of “Kant was the first to show. . .” 
It is not our present purpose to survey these rapidly proliferating 
and occasionally fertile inquiries but rather to consider the assump-
tions which often underlie them. Some forty years ago Seyyed Hos-
sein Nasr, at that time Dean and Professor of Philosophy at Tehran 
University, laid down the “conditions for a meaningful comparative 
philosophy.” It is worth revisiting Nasr’simportant essay from which, 
one would have hoped, many more comparativists might have derived 
considerable profit. 
Early in his analysis Nasr states the nature of the problem which 
bedevils many of the enterprises of those scholars, of both East and 
West, who attempt some manner of comparative philosophy (referred 
to henceforth simply as comparativists): 
The Western students of Oriental doctrines have usually tried to 
reduce these doctrines to “profane” philosophy; and modernized 
Orientals, often burdened by a half-hidden inferiority complex, have 
tried to give respectability to these doctrines and to “elevate” them 
by giving them the honor of being in harmony with the thought of 
whichever Western philosopher was in vogue. On both sides, usually 
the relation of the “philosophy” in question to the experience or di-
rect knowledge of the Truth, which is the source of this “philosophy,” 
is forgotten and levels of reality confused.10
Aristotle; Mencius: Aquinas; Shankara: Eckhart, Spinoza, Kant, Bradley; Nagarjuna: 
Hume, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Derrida; Dogen: Heidegger.
9 See G. Parkes, “Nietzsche and East Asian Thought: Influences, Impacts and Reso-
nances” in The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, ed. B. Magnus & K.M. Higgins 
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
10 S.H. Nasr, “Conditions for a Meaningful Comparative Philosophy,” Philosophy East 
and West, 22:1, 1972, p. 53.
metaphysics: east and west
27
One of the principal sources of this confusion is a failure to under-
stand the crucial distinctions between metaphysics as a scientia sacra 
on one hand, wedded to direct spiritual experience and complementing 
revealed religious doctrines, and what is usually meant in the modern 
West by “philosophy,” an autonomous and essentially rational and ana-
lytical inquiry into a range of issues and problematics. As Nasr observes,
What is usually called Oriental philosophy is for the most part the 
doctrinal aspect of a total spiritual way tied to a method of realiza-
tion and is inseparable from the revelation or tradition which has 
given birth to the way in question.11
Thus there is little common measure between the sapiential doc-
trines of the East which form part of a total spiritual economy and 
which draw on the wellsprings of revelation, tradition, and direct ex-
perience, and those mental constructions of Western thinkers which 
are usually circumscribed by the various alliances of rationalism, ma-
terialism, empiricism, and humanism which so dominate the “philo-
sophical” thinking of the modern West. As Agehananda Bharati noted 
in an acidic reference to various Western excursions into comparative 
philosophy,
No effort, however valiant and well-meant, should disabuse us of 
the fact that nobody from Kant to Heidegger, Rorty and Derrida has 
been interested in moksa [liberation] while nobody from Nagarjuna 
to Bhartrhari and Samkara has not.12
The only philosophers of the Western tradition who can meaning-
fully be compared with their Eastern counterparts are those theolo-
gians and metaphysicians who were indeed elaborating “the doctrinal 
aspect of a total spiritual way”—Plato, Plotinus, Eckhart, Aquinas, Bo-
naventura, and the like. On the other hand,
To speak of rationalistic philosophy and Chinese or Hindu philoso-
phy in the same breath is a contradiction, unless the word philoso-
11 S.H. Nasr, “Conditions for a Meaningful Comparative Philosophy,” p. 55 (italics 
mine).
12 A. Bharati, review of Derrida and Indian Philosophy, by H. Coward, Philosophy East 
and West, 42:2, 1992, p. 340.
touchstones of the spirit
28
phy is used in two different senses: first as a wisdom that is wed to 
spiritual experience, and second as mental construct, completely cut 
off from it. A lack of awareness of this basic distinction has made a 
complete sham of many studies of comparative philosophy and has 
helped to reduce to nil the real significance of Oriental metaphysics. 
This metaphysics, far from being the object of mental play, has the 
function of enabling men to transcend the mental plane.13
A meaningful comparative philosophy can only proceed on the 
basis of a proper understanding of the different levels on which meta-
physics, theology, and philosophy (in the modern sense) are situated. 
To approach a Shankara, a Nagarjuna, a Chuang-tzu, through the cat-
egories of a profane and one-dimensional “philosophy,” stripped of all 
reference to the transcendent and what this implies for the human des-
tiny, is to fall prey to that most pernicious of modern prejudices—the 
notion that the greater can be reduced to, and “explained” by, the terms 
of the lesser:
If a blind man were to develop a philosophy based upon his experi-
ence of the world derived from his four senses, surely it would differ 
from one based upon these four senses as well as upon sight. How 
much more would a “philosophy” based upon man’s rational analysis 
of sense data differ from one that is the result of the experience of 
a world which transcends both reason and the sensible world? . . . 
One must always remember the dictum of Aristotle that knowledge 
depends upon the mode of the knower.14 
It is not only possible but highly desirable that scholars, equipped 
with the proper tools and cognizant of the profound differences be-
tween any traditional civilization and the modern West, should illu-
minate the similarities and contrasts between the doctrines of the dif-
ferent religious traditions. In the case of comparative studies between 
traditional doctrines and the ideas of modern thinkers, such a task will 
necessarily foreground the chasm which separates them. It will also 
expose the hazards of glib formulations of similarities which exist only 
at relatively superficial levels. Furthermore,
13 S.H. Nasr, “Conditions for a Meaningful Comparative Philosophy,” p. 55.
14 S.H. Nasr, “Conditions for a Meaningful Comparative Philosophy,” p. 57.
metaphysics: east and west
29
Oriental doctrines can fulfill the most fundamental and urgent task 
of reminding the West of truths that have existed within its own tra-
dition but which have been completely forgotten. . . . Today it is near-
ly impossible for Western man to rediscover the whole of his own 
tradition without the aid of Oriental metaphysics. This is because the 
sapiential doctrines and the appropriate spiritual techniques . . . are 
hardly accessible in the West, and “philosophy” has become totally 
divorced from the nature of the spiritual experience.15
Philosophy and Metaphysics in Perennialist Perspective
Thus far we have been considering the case against a profane com-
parative philosophy as stated in Nasr’s short but forceful essay. Nasr 
himself belongs to a school of thought which has been called “tradi-
tionalism” or “perennialism,” and which is closely associated with its 
three most pre-eminent exponents: René Guénon (1886-1951), Ananda 
Coomaraswamy (1877-1947), and Frithjof Schuon (1907-1998). Their 
work turns on an affirmation of a timeless wisdom which lies at the 
heart of all integral religious traditions and seeks to elucidate the meta-
physical and cosmological principles which inform this perennial wis-
dom—hence the term “perennialism.” However, it is crucial to distin-
guish this school from other forms of so-called perennialism found in 
Theosophy, some forms of neo-Hinduism, and in the works of people 
such as Aldous Huxley who did much to popularize the term the “the 
perennial philosophy.”16 What sets the traditionalists apart is their 
commitment to the preservation of the particular forms which give 
each religious heritage its raison d’être and ensure its spiritual efficacy. 
Traditionalists adamantly reject any notion of a “universal” religion 
or the suggestion that some sort of “essence” can be distilled from the 
different religions in such a way as to provide a new spiritual path. To 
Nasr’s considerations we can now add an exposition of the traditional-
ist understandingno truth as if this were truth or in declaring it to be absolutely true 
that there is nothing but the relatively true; one might as well say that 
there is no language or write that there is no writing.51 
 
The ironic stance, so characteristic of postmodernist writing, be-
comes a kind of refuge. A “playful” detachment and an apparent “mor-
al neutrality” become a cover for moral nihilism (and, it might be said, 
for a political impotence, though this issue is rather more perplexing). 
It is no accident that postmodernist self-definitions are almost entirely 
negative. The Parisian pontificators are, veritably, the monks of nega-
tion! It has been observed that postmodernist critics
are against tradition for it is an oppressive authority, they are equally 
against modernism for it “has sold out to the arts of the museum.” 
And whenever interpreters venture any further and try to establish 
positive principles by which to identify the postmodernist art work 
50 G. Steiner, “To Civilize Our Gentlemen” in Language and Silence: Essays 1958-1966 
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), pp. 89-90.
51 F. Schuon, Logic and Transcendence: A New Translation with Selected Letters 
(Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2009), p. 6.
touchstones of the spirit
176
and distinguish it from what is not postmodernist, they invariably 
end up empty-handed.52 
The same can be said of postmodernist theory. Insofar as all this im-
pinges on the debate about education what we are inevitably left with 
(sooner rather than later) is a situation in which there is not only no 
agreement about what constitutes an educated human person but one 
in which there is not even an intelligible debate centering on compet-
ing visions of such an ideal.53 It is simply erased from the agenda.
Perhaps the most conspicuous impact of postmodernist theory in 
literature studies is the displacement of the artist, and to some extent, 
the eclipse of the very idea of art if by that term we imply a made ob-
ject which intentionally proclaims a coherent and meaningful vision of 
life. The theorist now usurps the artist: theory takes priority over art. 
The study of the novel, for example, is largely replaced by the study of 
“novel theory” or by one of its sub-genres such as “narratology.” The 
novel itself becomes little more than a platform from which to con-
struct a theoretical edifice. Interpretation, freed from the demands 
of a hermeneutic which focuses on authorial intention, does indeed 
become, as Foucault insists, an “infinite task,”54 or, in Agnes Heller’s 
phrase, “a boundless pluralism.”55 Such theory subverts any and every 
hermeneutic and in any particular work meaning is obscured, perhaps 
obliterated, by the preoccupation with certain formal and discursive 
properties.56 This kind of thinking and its implications needs to be ex-
amined much more critically if it is to be resisted. As Rita Felski has 
recently written:
[T]he idea that the formal properties of the literary text negate, tran-
scend, deconstruct, or otherwise problematize its substantive con-
tent is revealed as the product of the modern understanding of art 
and needs as such to be critically examined in relation to the ideo-
52 F. Feher, “The Pyrrhic Victory of Art in its War of Liberation: Remarks on the Post-
modernist Intermezzo” in A. Milner et al., Postmodernist Conditions, p. 85.
53 See A. Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, p. 337.
54 Per J.G. Merquior, Foucault, p. 74.
55 See A. Heller, “Existentialism, Alienation, Postmodernism,” p. 7.
56 One thinks, for instance, of a recent article about Wuthering Heights devoted en-
tirely to the place in the text of the letter h.
the past disowned
177
logical function which it serves. Thus entire academic industries are 
based upon the exegesis of the experimental literary or artistic text, 
which acquire an enigmatic aura, that can only be deciphered by the 
expert: “in a way analogous to religion, the work of art alludes mys-
teriously to a superior but now essentially opaque and unknowable 
order.”57 
As Berry has observed, in this kind of climate, the study of litera-
ture
ceases to be a meeting ground of all readers of a common tongue and 
becomes only the occasion of a deafening clatter about literature. 
Teachers and students read the great songs and stories to learn about 
them, not from them. The texts are tracked as by the passing of an 
army of ants, but the power of songs and stories to affect life is still 
little acknowledged, apparently because it is little felt.58 
 
Another bizarre sign of the times is the spectacle of some novelists 
now clearly no longer writing for any kind of public audience but only 
for the critics.59 Witness too some of the more absurd and symptom-
atic contentions recently made in defense of “Helen Demidenko.” One 
might observe in passing that the so-called Demidenko affair revealed 
nothing if not the frivolity, trendiness, and moral and political bank-
ruptcy of much of the Australian literary establishment—although we 
hardly needed this particular fiasco to make that plain.60 
57 R. Felski, “Feminism, Realism and the Avant-Garde,” p. 62. The internal quote is 
from B. McBurney, “The Postmodernist Transvaluation of Modernist Values,” Thesis 
Eleven, 12, 1985.
58 W. Berry, “The Loss of the University” in Home Economics: Fourteen Essays (San 
Francisco: North Point Press, 1987), p. 79. 
59 See Gore Vidal’s essay “American Plastic: The Matter of Fiction” in Matters of Fact 
and of Fiction, pp. 99-126.
60 In 1994 Helen Demidenko received the Miles Franklin Prize, Australia’s most pres-
tigious literary award for The Hand that Signed the Paper, a novel apparently based on 
her own family’s experiences of Stalinist purges in the Ukraine. After the awarding 
of the prize and the accompanying critical fanfare, the Ukrainian identity of “Helen 
Demidenko” and the experiences on which the novel was ostensibly based were ex-
posed as fraudulent. Robert Manne and others also denounced the poisonous anti-
Semitism of the novel, something which had apparently escaped the attention of crit-
touchstones of the spirit
178
The Proper Place of the Humanities and Our Attitude to the Past
Before concluding let me briefly affirm what I take to be the primary 
functions of the humanities. Let me firstly admit that I see no realis-
tic alternative to the “Great Books” approach in the study of the hu-
manities, most decisively in the study of literature. One can profitably 
argue about the canon, interrogate it, change it, enlarge it, revise it. 
No serious critic of literature has ever supposed the canon to be fixed, 
inscribed on a tablet of gold, inviolate and static for all time.61 Such a 
notion is simply a straw-man set up by those wishing to disable hu-
manistic approaches to the study of literature. But to reject the very 
idea of the canon is to cut oneself off from the treasury of the past and 
to live only by the fashionable dictates of an impoverished present. 
It is one of the glories of the human condition that we can make 
of ourselves what we will. In one sense we are what we believe our-
selves to be. One of the invaluable and irreplaceable functions of the 
humane disciplines was to expose the student to various images of the 
human condition, images and metaphors which spoke both to our an-
cestors and to ourselves across the barriers of time and space.62 Such 
study taught students to understand the profound language of image, 
symbol, and myth, those imaginative, non-mechanistic, and qualita-
tive modes of experience and understanding before which the modern 
mentality so often stands baffled. It is still possible to hear the voices 
of Homer or Meister Eckhart or William Blake, or indeed, if we are 
prepared to make the necessary effort, of Lao Tzu and Black Elk or the 
sages who composed The Upanishads. The problem is not that they 
have nothing to say to us: nothing could be more childish, more im-
pudent than such a belief. Nor, whatever